How many professional classical pianists are there?

[kevin69]

Its often said that becoming a professional, full-time, classical pianist is hard because of the number of high-quality graduates that you must compete against. But how many professionals are there? Is it a hundred, a few hundred, or thousands?

And would anyone care to guess to how this compares with fifty, one hundred or one hundred and fifty years ago?

My guess would be that there are many more pianists now, even allowing for the general increase in world population.

[richard black]

Depends what you mean by 'professional classical pianist'. I'm one - I earn almost my entire living by playing the piano - but I'm not principally a performer and I'm certainly not a soloist. Do you include people whose entire, or principal, source of income is teaching? Or do you mean people who earn their whole income playing solo classical concerts? (allowing that such folks will almost always do at least a little teaching because they typically get people queuing up for lessons).

[kevin69]

Hmmm.... i ithink i'd include teaching (and composing/playing music for tv/film/ads too).

The distribution of teachers is probably a bit different though: any large (western) city
should be capable of supporting a number of full-time teachers, but solo concert playing is more international rather than being geographical

[iansinclair]

I think it would depend very much indeed on whether you included teaching and the like, or whether you limit yourself strictly to solo or soloist (e.g. chamber music, symphonies, etc.) performing.  If the latter, I expect it would be similar to the situation I am quite familiar with: ballet.  There are, in all of North America (Canada and the USA) no more than 400 dancers who actually earn their living -- that is, earn a wage on which they can live a decent life -- dancing, rather than teaching etc. etc. etc. (there are more if you count small regional companies -- but those dancers do not earn a living doing it; they have to have other support).  And I would imagine that there are fewer classical pianists, using the same criterion.