With reference to the opening remark about the governments "Levelling up" idea, it can't be done unless they get off their collective backsides and fund the art's and local authorities properly! Living in the north west, Preston to be exact, we once had a half decent musical scene, the Royal Liverpool, the Halle, the Royal Northern all visited the Guild Hall, this despite it having the perfect acoustics for snooker, we also had a thriving chamber music series! My children were brought up on a diet of the usual classics, not much in the way of modern classics! But still they were exposed to lots of live music! Sadly, as the increased cutbacks to local government budgets started to take effect, the arts was one of the first areas to feel the pinch, the Guild Hall closed, thus depriving this and future generations of children of the opportunity to experience classical music! Add to this the dwindling budgets for music and the arts in schools, I am a school governor so can attest to this, and the future for British musicianship looks bleak, especially outside the big cities where a home orchestra is based! If the government has a real commitment to leveling up, how about cutting funding completely from a few of the London venues and sharing the funding across those places without a permanent orchestra, there is an audience, just a lack of accessable venues!
The Government’s “Levelling up”, if it works is probably a good thing. But what about “Levelling up” musically?
Back in my youth (a long time ago) I could listen to a Beethoven symphony and, despite being in no way an expert, I could generally differentiate between a performance by, say, Klemperer, Karajan or Kleiber. I could sometimes identify the orchestra (Czech Philharmonic, Berlin Phil etc) I also remember some, let us say, not very good orchestras and I have no doubt at all that the general standard of orchestral playing has progressed significantly. This is surely good, but they have become faceless and have a uniform sound.
Nowadays with Beethoven sets coming thing and fast from every likely and unlikely source this it seems impossible to differentiate let alone identify orchestras and conductors. European orchestras sound like American ones and I heard a Korean orchestra a few days ago that was excellent but anonymous and “international”.
The modern breed of jet-setting maestro rarely has his or her “own” orchestra, even so called principal conductors rarely conduct more than half of a season’s concerts. I attend quite a few concerts and almost never hear a conductor who is not fully competent – technically. Unfortunately, in many cases their musical thought seems lagging behind their ability. I could name only a dozen or so conductors who seem to have actually thought behind the notes and come up with a real interpretation, quite a few “famous names” would not be included.
Is the blame for this with record companies? Are they desperate for Maestro X and Maestro Y to have as much exposure as possible, usually accompanied by hyperbolic marketing.
Is this good due to the hight standard of playing and conducting or a bad thing due o a loss of individuality?
Apologies to Ludwin van, just an obvious example! I will stop rambling now.
Message Thread
« Back to index | View thread »
Thank you for taking part in the MusicWeb International Forum.
Len Mullenger - Founder of MusicWeb