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Greg Sandow on the future of classical music

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Archives for November 2007

Under the surface

November 29, 2007 by Greg Sandow

Deutsche Grammophon has just unveiled a new download site, where all of us can buy their classical recordings, including many that have long been out of print on CD. And all of this without DRM! ("Digital Rights Management," which means the kind of copy-protection that up to now has beenalmost universal when we buy downloads (though the tide is starting to shift, not only at DG, but also on iTunes and at Amazon, where all downloads are DRM-free). A good thing, obviously. But the day it was announced, I got an amazed e-mail from someone who … [Read more...]

Riots?

November 19, 2007 by Greg Sandow

Some comic relief. Pinchas Zuckerman, uneasy about the future of classical music, and squirming helplessly as he moans about it in the Denver Post, let fly with this: If [classical music isn't] synonymous with our existence, or [isn't so to] at least 5 to 6 percent of the population, then society will become a jungle. And we don't want to see riots as we saw them in the '60s, because that was chaos. Classical music as a civilizing force -- that's a gratifying myth (idealistic at best, self-congratulatory at worst) that we've all met … [Read more...]

Correcting mistakes

November 16, 2007 by Greg Sandow

I'm withdrawing my "Indie pop footnotes" post. It had some mistakes, some due to my carelessness, some from misinformation. What follows is (I hope) more accurate. It follows up on my earlier post about Sufjan Stevens making history -- maybe -- at BAM. Other indie rock people have done work with orchestras. I've heard, for instance, about this happening in Australia. Ben Folds has appeared with many Australian orchestras, with whom he sometimes improvises, even in songs where they might simply be backing him. The DVD of him playing with … [Read more...]

Berlin moves

November 15, 2007 by Greg Sandow

I've never seen such a crush of classical music personalities, as at the two concerts in New York this week by Dudamel and the Venezuelan youth orchestra. And then came three concerts by the Berlin Philharmonic, which of course has close ties with the Venezuelans. These five concerts together were the hottest classical music ticket in New York, and also meant a lot for the future of the field. I'm reviewing it all for the Wall Street Journal, so here I'll skip any comments on the musical performances. But as for the future of classical music -- … [Read more...]

A look at the future

November 8, 2007 by Greg Sandow

Well, maybe not the future, but one possibility. This was Sufjan Stevens's piece BQE at BAM last weekend, part of their Next Wave festival. Here was a top indie rock guy creating a multimedia piece, 30 minutes long, with the music written for orchestra (30 pieces or so, counting his band). And he most certainly can write for orchestra. This wasn't the embarrassment we all too often get, when pop people venture into classical music. Jon Pareles wrote a rave review in the New York Times, both of  BQE and the show of Stevens's songs that … [Read more...]

Levine a lot better

November 3, 2007 by Greg Sandow

I'd been critical of James Levine's conducting in the Met's opening night Lucia. So it's only fair to say that in the new Macbeth production, he's much, much better. Right from the start, the orchestra was crisp, and dotted rhythms (very vague in Lucia) were strong and clear, with each note distinct. Sudden loud chords were really loud and sudden. Some scenes were terrific, or even spectacularly terrific -- the apparitions, the Sleepwalking Scene, the Scottish exiles. Conducting like this -- sharp, pristine, focused, energetic, … [Read more...]

“How to do it” footnote

November 1, 2007 by Greg Sandow

A while ago I wrote about  interpreting ticket-sale statistics, as what I hoped would be a helpful guide for journalists trying to make sense of those numbers. I had a lot to say about subscription sales, since these are especially tricky. When someone says "our subscriptions are up," do they mean the number of subscribers, the number of tickets sold to subscribers, the amount of money made from subscription sales, or the percentage of total sales that subscriptions make up? So here's something else to think about, most helpfully offered in an … [Read more...]

Dumbing it down

November 1, 2007 by Greg Sandow

I can't say I liked the piece on Peter Gelb and the Metropolitan Opera in the October 22 issue of the New Yorker. It's far too positive. In fact, it's 11 pages of syrup. I hope I've made it clear that I admire Peter, and what he's doing. He's my poster boy for the future of big classical music institutions; when I was asked to nominate people for a classical music award, I named him (though he didn't get it). And certainly I liked the things in this piece that showed his personality, and what seems to be his admirable working style. But still … [Read more...]

Greg Sandow

Though I've been known for many years as a critic, most of my work these days involves the future of classical music -- defining classical music's problems, and finding solutions for them. Read More…

About The Blog

This started as a blog about the future of classical music, my specialty for many years. And largely the blog is still about that. But of course it gets involved with other things I do — composing music, and teaching at Juilliard (two courses, here … [Read More...]

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How to write a press release

As a footnote to my posts on classical music publicists, and how they could do better, here's a post I did in 2005 -- wow, 11 years ago! --  about how to make press releases better. My examples may seem fanciful, but on the other hand, they're almost … [Read More...]

The future of classical music

Here's a quick outline of what I think the future of classical music will be. Watch the blog for frequent updates! I Classical music is in trouble, and there are well-known reasons why. We have an aging audience, falling ticket sales, and — in part … [Read More...]

Timeline of the crisis

Here — to end my posts on the dates of the classical music crisis  — is a detailed crisis timeline. The information in it comes from many sources, including published reports, blog comments by people who saw the crisis develop in their professional … [Read More...]

Before the crisis

Yes, the classical music crisis, which some don't believe in, and others think has been going on forever. This is the third post in a series. In the first, I asked, innocently enough, how long the classical music crisis (which is so widely talked … [Read More...]

Four keys to the future

Here, as promised, are the key things we need to do, if we're going to give classical music a future. When I wrote this, I was thinking of people who present classical performances. But I think it applies to all of us — for instance, to people who … [Read More...]

Age of the audience

Conventional wisdom: the classical music audience has always been the age it is now. Here's evidence that it used to be much younger. … [Read More...]

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