Well I couldn't agree more that this is important.
I know very few people irl who have any interest in classical music whatsoever.
Those that do have an interest have a knowledge that they would admit was rather shallow - mostly coming from listening to things like 'the 20 greatest classical pieces of all time' on the radio.
So what can be done? Do you have any thoughts on the way the footprint of classical music might be increased?
Hi stoat_king,
The situation with classical music today is very depressed - I think this is one thing everyone here can agree on!
What it needs is to be performed in a way that almost no one can ignore, and that from the first tone to the last is of transformative power. It is up to performers to make this change and save classical music. History shows that it is possible, as with the Lisztomania of the 1800s, and with the Callas craze which continues even today to smoulder. And with Ervin Nyiregyhazi's performances - whatever one may think of his playing - in the 1940s he would have audiences stomping their feet, cheering him on and shouting his name, and doing the "wave" before anyone knew what the "wave" was. There isn't any solution in the sense of different marketing, or budget increase, or different planning/organization of the concerts that can do it.
It has to come from the performers.
I am sure it will happen once those in power within the classical music world are dislodged, and this will happen when classical music bottoms out and the present approach to it is finally revealed to have been a total failure with the general public. When the orchestras finally go under, and the concert hall doors need to be kept open, and the music schools can not financially justify themselves, then, somehow, there will be change.
And maybe even rock music will fill the concert halls significantly then as the doors must be kept open.
Starting from very bottom, classical music will have to fight its way back to the top and on a new basis that the general public wants to hear.
Many years ago - and I mentioned this as no credit to myself, it is just what happened - I met up with a very famous cellist. I accompanied him in some of Nyiregyhazi's dark music for cello and piano . . . and I played very well thanks to the pressure, accompanying a musician like him, that is pressure!!! . . . and afterwards I played some of Nyiregyhazi's music for him solo and did not hold back on the tone.
He said it reminded him of a few rock concerts he had been too.
That is the kind of excitement and atmosphere people need from classical music. It doesn't mean the other things won't be there, too, but the ultimate power and excitement is missing in 2015.
The maximum size tone that is possible with a piano needs to be embraced. And if I can do it, or come close to it - and I am no Magnus Samuelsson - then anyone can do it. It isn't about strength, it is about accelerating the keys from key surface, and pulling the sound out of a piano instead of pressing or banging it out which actually makes the tone contract relative to the energy expended and induces stridency into the sound instead of focusing the energy directly into the wanted resonances and with maximum purity. Anyone, man or woman, can do it, and whether one weighs 200 pounds or 120 pounds is of no difference. It is all about technique and is not about anything else. An optimal sitting position relative to the piano, maybe lower and further back than one sees most of the time, can help greatly with the employment of the back muscles and with much deeper sources of acceleration.
The general principle applies to orchestras, too. One can read about how an orchestra would become "transformed" when Liszt conducted. It didn't become transformed because he could beat time more accurately than other conductors. It was due to something else, and something that is very much more than just balancing and shaping the timbres, or keeping synchronicity of the performers, managing the bowing of the strings, et c.
I am not worried about the outcome.
There is a saying that when the student is ready, the teacher arrives.
Once classical music bottoms out, it will be a much more democratic market, and many courageous performers, and also the audiences, will reap the benefits.
I just wish I could live long enough to hear more than the beginning of this.
I don't have a specific time line, but I do know from experience that even when one knows something is inevitable, it can take a lot longer to transpire than one might be inclined to suppose, sometimes years or even decades longer.
For now there are performers like Fazil Say who one can hear . . . just listen to the communicativeness of the playing, and the asynchonization of the voices, in the first movement of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata here . . .
. . . and notice the tremendous communicative power in how he plays the Liszt Sonata . . .
It is going to happen.
And I, for one, am not going to just sit back with a bowl of popcorn, twiddle my thumbs, and watch the show as it unfolds. I am getting into better technical pianistic condition than ever before in my life, much better than anything heard on my YouTube recordings, and better than how I played back in 1994-95 when for instance the fastest leaps in Scriabin were no issue of accuracy in notes or in any other aspect. When in good condition I can play fast, not only slow, and way out in the far and Busonian extreme of fast - you just don't hear any of it with these recordings.
The crisis which, with every day that passes is one day closer to entering into full force - this crisis that will be the catalyst to bring all of this to a head will be very similar to the crisis of the late 1700s which overthrew the power of the aristocracies and paved the way for the romantic era in music.
What is approaching isn't just about classical music. It is about governments and our rights and our democratic say relative to the (undemocratic and evil) things they are doing, currencies, new technologies and industries, financial systems of debt without end . . . but there will be an end to the debt without end and thanks to the dislinear function of interest rates . . . it is a big thing that is coming, so you - and especially if you are young - need to think about how to make it through this not only unimpaired and undamaged, but as a "winner" as there will be many winners and successes.
This will be bigger than the Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution or the Great Depression which finally allowed dislodgement of the massive agriculture sector of the U.S. economy to make way for something very different. If it hadn't been for the Great Depression, the people who work at Google today might be growing tomatoes. But it all had to happen as it did and due to a confluence of many factors.
So think about this and your life in it.
What is approaching is way bigger than just about classical music, and is both a grand crisis and also a grand opportunity for those who are equipped and able to seize upon it.
It is a very rarely achieved level of opportunity, historically.
Think and act positive.
Passivity and inaction in this environment is not wise.
Topic: VIDEO: Prelude in C Minor BWV 999 by J.S. Bach