A fortnight ago, something odd happened in Perth Concert Hall's music programme that provoked a little thought.

At the 11th hour, a scheduled concert was pulled from the advertised programme and deferred for a year. No hard and fast explanation was offered, and the hall simply stated that the cancellation was due to "unforeseen circumstances". What might that mean? The concert was a recital by the celebrated piano duo, Simon Crawford-Phillips and Philip Moore, and the programme was fielded under the title The Art Of Transcription. I think, simply, that the concert didn't sell, and that the hall, to avoid embarrassment to itself and the performers, decided rather than cancel it outright, to defer it and find somewhere else to put the concert where it might attract a more favourable response.

Outright cancellation, these days, seems to me an unusual occurrence, unless a performer is taken ill at the very last minute. So what went wrong here? There has been some discussion about this, but my own views are reasonably clear. In the first place, I think James Waters, creative director of Perth Concert Hall's music programme, might accept that the placement of the concert left it vulnerable. It was a one-off evening concert on Wednesday October 30. It belonged in no context other than the hall's general classical programme. It was close to but not part of any other stream of classical music activities in the hall.

That left it isolated and exposed to the weekly vicissitudes of planning what shows to attend, what can be afforded, what else is on, what the weather is like, and the myriad alternatives that present themselves in any such decision-making process. And that situation was possibly compounded by the fact that the hall, at the same time, was actively promoting a new Sunday afternoon series, which was already selling well and which, in its run of concerts from early October through to next June, will feature (guess who?) that same piano duo of Simon Crawford-Phillips and Philip Moore. I suspect that any resultant confusion among concert-goers was probably inevitable.

But there was another factor, I suspect, in the cancellation of this show. It's the historic T-word. The programme was entitled The Art Of Transcription, and it included music by, among others, Beethoven and Brahms, all of it transcribed for piano duet by the composers themselves, and therefore possessing all of the veracity, authority, authenticity and credibility the music would ever need. Yet there are many people, some of them professional artistic administrators and promoters, who bluntly believe that a "transcription" automatically means something that is not the original and therefore something lesser, something second-best, or, as has often been expressed to me: "not quite the real thing".

Intellectually and practically, that is a preposterous idea. For centuries composers have themselves, or through their most trusted associates, made transcriptions for piano or piano duet. Long before the days of recording and the ready transmission of anything anywhere, it was the way of doing business. It was the way of disseminating your music. It was the way of selling it and making a living. It was the way of getting the music played and heard. If you wrote a symphony for an orchestra, how would you get it played and heard and how would you get it out there? You would prepare a transcription that would be targeted at the rapidly growing market of domestic music-making.

But, and this is vital, when these composers undertook transcriptions, there was no compromise, no soft sell. They lavished as much care and craftsmanship on the transcription as they did on the original. And that is what gives a transcription its veracity: they cared. It was never dog work. A transcription is an additional version of the original, and it is just as valid and viable. There's a deal of it coming up: missionary zeal is required here, and if there's a debate to be had, then Perth Concert Hall, with its determination to have transcription concerts on the agenda, is leading the way.