The sequel to “Classical Music in Western Culture Today – Speech Delivered to the World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland“.
“Declining audiences, government cuts, disastrous CD Sales, sponsors pulling out of the arts, fewer children learning instruments, and a total lack of interest from the general media unless semi-naked bimbo violinists or something like the David (‘Shine’) Helfgott circus are involved. This is the reality of classical music in the West today.”
This diatribe ties in pretty neatly with this week’s news that 65% of British children aged six to fourteen cannot name a single classical composer. But who penned it? Was it ‘Stormin Norman’ Lebrecht, whose doom-laden scenariosbecame familiar to Daily Telegraph readers? Or, perhaps, Sir Thomas Allen, lashing out on all sides during his recent night off at the Royal Philharmonic Society Awards? Neither. I delivered these words in a speech to the World Economic Forum in February 1998when I was asked to tackle the impossibly complex topic of “Classical Music in Western Culture Today” in ten minutes flat!
Given that apparently only 31% of our children can identify a cello, you may find it strange to believe that I no longer hold with the doomsday scenario and – over the coming months – I will explain why there is cause for optimismin the world of classical music. For I believe that most of the ‘panic-stations’ forecasts we have heard over the past four years can be put down to one thing. Change. Classical music as a profession has changed more since I wrote that opening paragraph thanin all the previous thirty years. Imposed change is never comfortable but it can be as good as a crotchet rest. As a result of the refusal by ‘major’ recording companies to continue bankrolling unprofitable recordings, musicians – and everyone else involvedin classical music – have been forced to step outside their comfort-zones and discover reality. It has been tough. And it has involved asking lots of awkward questions about ‘rolls in society’, ‘relevance to communities’, etc., that were previously possibleto avoid. No longer does the arrival of conductor X in city Y guarantee a divine right to foist yet another CD-set of the complete Beethoven symphonies on a largely indifferent public. If that’s the bad news then the good news is that the classical music worldhas accepted its challenge. The New York Philharmonic’s reaction to the destruction of the World Trade Center is a good example. Later this month they will premiere John Adams’ On the Transmigration of Souls – specifically and immediately commissioned in responseto the atrocity – alongside Beethoven’s Ninth. It is an inspired piece of programming and an auspicious start to the tenure of their incoming musical director Lorin Maazel.
Elsewhere, orchestras, composers and opera companies have been falling over themselves to initiate educational programmes, get into the schools and develop new audiences. And there are real signs that this surge of creativityis beginning to pay off. Quite how, I will outline in future columns, but whether the media has caught up with this is another question, as the predicable furore over next Saturday’s Last Night of the Proms sadly demonstrates. In case you missed the ‘scandal’,Rule Britannia – in its xenophobic entirety – has been dropped, apparently at the command of the BBC Symphony orchestra’s soon-to-depart maestro Leonard Slatkin. Unusually for an American, Leonard has singularly failed to master the art of the sound bite.Shortly after his arrival at the helm of the BBC’s symphonic flagship he failed to endear himself to his female members by publicly suggesting that the fleshy bits “hanging from their arms” might look better if they were covered up. The customary media bedlamensued, but this was nothing compared to poor Leonard’s attempt to tamper with our hallowed ‘Last Night’. Tabloids not noted for their coverage of classical music rushed to devote full pages to the outrage (conveniently ignoring all seventy two other promconcerts). Axe the words of Rule Britannia ?! Sacrilege!! But who says so? Certainly not the Prom’s founder, Sir Henry Wood, whose Fantasia on British Sea Songs which began the Rule Britannia tradition – will be dutifully performed by maestro Leonard. No,it was Sir Malcolm Sargent who introduced the full-blown, tub-thumping Brit-feast that we have come to know and …. (fill in your verb of choice). Whether it is fair to expect an American to conduct such lines as “The Nations, not so blest as thee, Must intheir turns to tyrants fall” with relish in these sensitive times, I don’t know. Nor do I care. I prefer to remember the first time I encountered Leonard Slatkin in the late eighties in a fantastic programme of Hindemith, Barber and Shostakovich at the RFH.For I witnessed a master at work – a true ‘natural’ among today’s maestri. Strangely enough I don’t recall any mention of that concert in the tabloids. PS What ever did become of David Helfgott?
