Of all the daft notions about the classical music business, the daftest is that it’s
a business at all. Seriously: an industry that’s structured to make a loss, unable to survive without subsidy? If you enjoy conspiracy theories, classical music’s façade of white-tied affluence, combined with fading memories of Herbert von Karajan’s private jet, might imply the existence of some vast global musical-industrial complex. Perhaps it even existed, once. But the modern reality is a fragile network of (to quote Sir James MacMillan) cottage industries: ensembles, promoters, boutique record labels, all heads down in their silos, sweating away at whatever it takes for their own corner of this unsustainable ecosystem to break even.
For proof, think back to the 1990s, when Classic FM plugged a new recording of Gorecki’s Third Symphony and the impossible actually happened: a serious, large-scale work by a contemporary classical composer sold in platinum-disc quantities. At this point, conventional economics dictate that Gorecki’s symphony should have conquered the world’s concert halls.
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