By David Amos
SAN DIEGO –A few years ago I reviewed a book by Norman Lebrecht titled The Maestro Myth, which covered the history of orchestral conducting and the movers and shakers who shaped and controlled this art form. This was a power-packed, controversial book which I not only found fascinating, but saw it as a stark exposé of a profession both frequented by sublime masters and its good share of charlatans. It also pointed out conductors who were (take your pick here!) Jewish, anti-Semitic, neutral, Nazi sympathizers, Fascist and Nazi haters, righteous Gentiles, escapees from Germany, victims, or aggressors. What was inescapable was the fact that all these high-profile conductors were clearly on one side of the fence or another.
Mr. Lebrecht wrote another bombshell, When the Music Stops. Published by Simon and Schuster Ltd. Of London, this is a book that deals with the business side of serious music. The main chapter headings break down the subject matter to Sex, Lies and Videotapes, The Managers, The Maestros, The Star System in Classical Music, the Festival Racket, and The Corporate Murder of Classical Music.
If you feel that this is all ridiculous, scandalous exaggerations, think again. Look what has happened to classical music in the last quarter century. Orchestras are folding right and left, as was the case with our own San Diego Symphony about 15 years ago, Recently, there have been serious unrest and financial troubles in Detroitand Philadelphia… Audiences worldwide are dwindling and the average age of the regular concert-goers is rising, with no increase in attendance of younger music enthusiasts. Classical music record sales (compact discs) are at an all-time low, with most record companies in crisis situations, folding, or deleting their classical offerings. Artists’ managers are desperately promoting the musicians they represent and are fighting a losing battle; and very few performance organizations are willing to take a chance on talented, but unknown performers or composers. The only ones benefitting is the handful of superstars who keep demanding exorbitant fees, while playing the same old tired repertory. People still flock to hear Perlman play the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto but many, many others are staying clear. The star system has been allowed to run out of control, to the benefit of a few and to the detriment of the majority of the public and the art form. “While a few high performers grow rich and distant, unpushy artists go hungry and concert halls are increasingly half-empty. Even the big names fail to sell out, amid a widening yawn of ennui”.
In the concert hall, the central rows are reserved for corporate guests, while the young music lovers can afford only the remoter regions, leaving them feeling less involved, less enraptured, and less likely to return. Prime seats cost up to eighty pounds in London, two hundred fifty pounds inTokyo. The moral foundation of music—the inherent democracy of a lovely noise that can be admired by all, regardless of status and education—has been thoughtlessly abandoned. The Concert To End All Concerts is almost upon us”.
Interestingly, there are a few parallels here to today’s politics.
No musician has made it on talent alone, and this book explores the people behind the great stars. Someone had to first pay for the music, profit from it, and organize it. Most artists are the result of aggressive promotion and hype. You may have seen recently the crop of very young performers who have been thrown in front of orchestras and into concert halls far before they were emotionally ready to cope with the demands of frequent concertizing. Many of them were burned out by the age of twenty. But the beneficiaries were consistently their agents and promoters. “Classical music has become so polluted by the unregulated intercourse of private pushers and public servants, that it can not distinguish principle from expedience”.
The famous music festivals, which most of us have always regarded as an expression of artistry in its purest form, are also bluntly assessed. “Pilgrims who visit Lourdes or Amritsar expect to be scalped by locals as the price of faith. Salzburg offers no spiritual compensations. Its Mozart worship is fake and its biggest hit is The Sound of Music, a Hollywood musical which sanitizes recent history. There is little truth in festive Salzburg, and scarcely any beauty. Yet ,Salzburg, the front of modern festivals, was conceived as an artist’s idyll, a refuge from materialism. Its surrender to mammon dealt a mortal blow to musical idealism”.
I am sure that you can see why I found this book hard to put down. And, I have only given you a hint at the tonnage of information that it contains. Most of it is grim and pessimistic, but there is hope. If the trend continues on its present path, something will have to give, and classical music will survive and live, but probably in a form quite different from what we now know and have.
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Amos is conductor of the Tifereth Israel Community Orchestra (TICO) and has guest conducted professional orchestras throughout the world. He may be contacted at david.amos@sdjewishworld.com