Will Classical Music Survive the Future?

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2 points·carpdiem··5 comments

As a dedicated concert goer I can tell you that the difference between a recording and a live performance is enormous. There is a sense of excitement and danger about a liver performance, a rough edge that never appears in a recording.

It's the difference between television and the cinema, or a driving game and driving for real.

Perhaps it's less true for orchestras, but I have exquisite recordings of chamber music, and I will still pay to go to live performances.

It's different.

Agreed.

Have you seen the Berlin Philharmonic's Digital Concert Hall? http://dch.berliner-philharmoniker.de/

Bookmarked - thank you.

There really are only a few great conductors in the world. There is a very real danger that people (like me, presently) would rather stay home and listen to Carlos Kleiber conduct Beethoven 7 rather than head to Avery Fisher to watch an uninspired performance of Maazel conducting the New York Philharmonic. There is no danger that a significant number of people would rather stay home than attend a performance of Firebird with Gergiev and the Vienna Philharmonic.

Will Michelangelo's David survive the future?

Oh you mean the Classical Music business. Yeah, it will, because as RiderOfGiraffes says, no recording can capture the ambiance or immediacy of live performance. On top of that, few great concerts are recorded. They could fix that if they wanted to: you can go to archive.org and get decades of Grateful Dead concerts.

Will the diamond-encrusted concert halls with their $150 tickets to hear old warhorses over and over survive? No. At least, not if the middle-class keeps getting decimated by our Great Leaders.

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