The Classical Recording Industry: Revitalized, Not Dead
A variety of recent recordings have caught my attention, and they've made me think about the cliché that the classical-music recording industry is dead. It most certainly is not dead. It is changed.
What we have today is more recordings issued by artists and artistic institutions themselves: the Chicago Symphony's ReSound label; Bridge Records, which is all about its own artists; the Mariinsky Theater's own label; LSO live; and so many more. We have more and more high-quality re-issues of important recordings from the past (such as Audite's recent Furtwängler series), along with occasional reissues of not-so-important recordings from the past. And we have more recordings of little-known repertoire: Naxos's wonderful American music series; cpo's exploration of so many obscure composers; Bis's similarly adventurous approach. What we don't have any longer are huge, giant labels dominating the record industry. We have a growing recognition among musicians at all levels that the purpose of recording is no longer to make gobs of money, but to document their art. That strikes me as a very healthy development.
At the time I wrote this article, Arkivmusic.com was listing 251 recordings of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony that one could buy! Even more impressive for someone who grew up in an era when finding a recording of a Bruckner or Nielsen symphony could involve research and hard work, there were 61 recordings of Bruckner's Fifth, and 39 of Carl Nielsen's Fifth. Want further proof that the recording industry is alive and vital? There were, at the same time, two different recordings of George Antheil's Fifth Symphony.
Call it a tale of Fifth Symphonies if you wish, but when I started collecting and broadcasting classical-music recordings in the 1960s--the so-called heyday of the recording company giants--I did not have anywhere near the kind of mind-boggling choice I do today. Those who have sounded the death knell for recordings, including critic Norman Lebrecht, simply do not know what they're talking about. They do not understand that a major change in a business model doesn't mean its death. It actually means a revitalization of an industry.
At the time I wrote this article, Arkivmusic.com was listing 251 recordings of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony that one could buy! Even more impressive for someone who grew up in an era when finding a recording of a Bruckner or Nielsen symphony could involve research and hard work, there were 61 recordings of Bruckner's Fifth, and 39 of Carl Nielsen's Fifth. Want further proof that the recording industry is alive and vital? There were, at the same time, two different recordings of George Antheil's Fifth Symphony.
Call it a tale of Fifth Symphonies if you wish, but when I started collecting and broadcasting classical-music recordings in the 1960s--the so-called heyday of the recording company giants--I did not have anywhere near the kind of mind-boggling choice I do today. Those who have sounded the death knell for recordings, including critic Norman Lebrecht, simply do not know what they're talking about. They do not understand that a major change in a business model doesn't mean its death. It actually means a revitalization of an industry.
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