As an educational experiment, we offered university students an elective course with the opportunity to attend classical music concerts. An important motivation for this study is to investigate the attitudes of a cohort of students, who on their own attend few live classical music concerts, towards different genres, repertoires, and instrumentation. Do the concerts capture students’ imagination, motivate them to listen to the pieces again, and influence them to attend other concerts? The study summarises the experiences of 125 university students at live music concerts, identifying the characteristics which reinforce the development of a musical identity and enhance or diminish the experience of listening. Although several responses highlighted one particular composition or performer, a significant share of students mentioned general and broad characteristics of musical performance. The students were surprised by the diversity of classical music, and it was confirmed that the genre could not be treated as a single category. As the aim was not the measurement of preferences for specific musical genres, we could avoid aesthetic atomism and present more than short excerpts from each piece, which alone might not have had the expected effect. Instead, the concerts featured the live performance of compositions in their entirety in a concert hall setting. The results highlight the fact that classical music works have an impact in their entirety, so that the preference tests do not achieve the desired effect by selecting out the details.

The research aims to investigate students’ thoughts, likes, and dislikes regarding classical music concerts given their otherwise inactive art consumption patterns. The results include qualitative assessment, which is derived from answers to the open-ended questions of the questionnaire and is complemented by quantitative data. As authors, researchers, teachers, performers, and proponents of concert pedagogy, we consider it important to understand the dynamics, motivational forces, and different effects present in the field. The self-designed questionnaire consists of closed and open questions, which students complete online at the end of the course. The closed questions focused on music biography in addition to demographic data, while the open questions allowed students to express their attitudes and opinions about each concert. Quantitative data were analysed using SPSS and the answers to the open questions were analysed using MAXQDA Pro software. Our research curiosity was to explore how university students perceive classical music. What captures them in the performances and what influences their reception.

The research has shown that university students can enjoy classical music concerts, despite the fact that they are less likely to attend these events on their own initiative. Of the surveyed students, 93.6% would take the elective course again if they had the opportunity to do so in the future. Music and its audience form a symbiotic relationship, with several students admitting that classical concerts are not their primary preference but it was nonetheless enjoyable for them to discover the variety of classical music. The age group of university students preferred a relatively varied programme featuring a wide range of instruments and short pieces. 38% of the young people in the sample subsequently listened to the pieces they had heard at home. Overall, participants demonstrated an openness to classical music, enjoyed the novelty of the experience, and planned to more frequently attend these events in the future, suggesting that the presentation of artistic values and the experience of live music positively affects the willingness to attend further concerts in the short term. The results highlight that it is worth investigating in a real-world context how factors which are external to music may impact auditory experiences, implying that further research is needed to identify external factors which either facilitate or interfere with reception. The elective course was launched as an educational experiment, but feedback clearly shows that this initiative helps students spend meaningful leisure time together, providing them with a sense of relaxation and significant emotional enhancement. In the long term, this form of education contributes to the live presentation of the values of classical music, which is an excellent way to educate audiences.

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