I was also faced with the prospect of playing the Waldstein Sonata in half an hour. Anyway, I'd been asked to speak to a group of about twenty music students from the local school, all boys, and they were great - very lively, funny, bright. I wasn't 'on message'. Oxbridge is the best place to study composition. A good review in Gramophone magazine guarantees very large sales.
All good composers have publishers.
And so on. It seemed reasonable that all performances were sparsely attended and in the same few venues. It was natural that such difficult music could only be attempted by a few dedicated brethren, or ensembles of the Chosen Few. Well, twenty years later I feel rather differently. By the way, I still think Boulez's Second Piano Sonata is a thrilling piece and Xenakis is one of the great composers of the twentieth century.