Bret Ludwig wrote:
Harry Lavo wrote:
"paul packer" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 08 Feb 2006 01:42:07 GMT, Jenn
wrote:


A conversation today with Mark Scatterday, the present conductor of the
much recorded Eastman Wind Ensemble, brought to me a reality of the
present-day classical music recording business: It's really pretty
bleak out there. This ensemble, which has recorded over 40 albums for
Mercury, DGG, Philips, Warner, Sony, and others, basically can't get a
recording released by any of the "majors". Virtually every classical
recording, other than super stars like Yo Yo Ma and cross over acts,
lose money. I know that we all know this intellectually, but it was
kind of brought home to me this week. If we lose this niche of the
record business, we will all be so much poorer for it.

Part of the problem is that the classical music recording business has
brought very little new to the table in the last 40 or 50 years that
wasn't atonal and unpleasant to listen to.

Absolutely agree. Apart from neglect, the arts community has helped
slit it's own throat by willfully and stubbornly giving the public what
it DOESN'T want, something affirmed by the recent huge swing by young
composers back to tonal music. Atonality was never going to lead
anywhere except to the public's abandonment of classical music, and so
it was.


Another is that, since the
classical musicians of the early and middle 20th century were at such a
peak of the art, it's often very difficult to equal, let alone improve
on the extant recordings. And a fourth, for Americans, is that
classical music is essentially European, and the Europeans have a
distressing tendency to do it better than we do-a tendency that strikes
me as normal rather than depressing.

Maybe classical music has its roots in Europe but the US has a fine
tradition of classical music going back to before the Civil War. And
I've no doubt there are any number of young composers in the New
World--maybe currently earning their living writing film or similar
music--who would love the opportunity to be heard in the concert hall.
Plus there's a wealth of tonal music from the old stalwarts who
beavered on through the barren years of atonality-Barber, Diamond,
Harris and William Schuman, not to mention wonderful emigres like
Miklos Rozsa, practically all of whose output is currently available on
CD. I don't believe the problem is lack of listenihng material.