Hello and welcome to my new website. In my blog, I will be offering thoughts on various issues, mainly related to music. I will talk about music history, the piano, pedagogical concerns, and recordings (both new and historical).
Despite the often discussed financial troubles of the classical music business in 21st-Century North America and Europe, music lovers and musicians still paradoxically live in a time of plenty. Virtually the entire history of recorded sound is easily available at the click of a mouse to anyone in the world with an internet connection. Orchestras, too, despite a somewhat tenuous financial future in many cases, have never been more plentiful in number or of better overall quality. Today, there are hundreds, if not thousands of orchestras around the world able to dispatch a difficult Strauss tone poem with ease. A century and a half ago that number amounted to little more than a mere handful. Also, there have never been more young musicians wanting to form ensembles such as string quartets.
And, despite an apparently shrinking audience, more young musicians than ever are ambitious about learning the craft. Conservatories and university music departments on several continents are overflowing with excellent students. There are now over 500 international piano competitions, each with dozens or even hundreds of prospective entrants, all of whom have mastered large swaths of the most difficult literature. The mind boggles.
Why is that? For many observers nowadays, this is a foolhardy situation, with countless highly trained instrumentalists and singers having, at best, only a modest income to look forward to. But seen in a more positive light, it may also mean that the music-making impulse, despite financial hardship, is not easily quelled. And so, my intention is not to pronounce a a prolonged funeral oration on what once was, although I am very aware of the extent and nature of the problems in the business. Rather, it is to take joy and pleasure in what exists, and to share that joy with anyone who cares to join in.
Despite the often discussed financial troubles of the classical music business in 21st-Century North America and Europe, music lovers and musicians still paradoxically live in a time of plenty. Virtually the entire history of recorded sound is easily available at the click of a mouse to anyone in the world with an internet connection. Orchestras, too, despite a somewhat tenuous financial future in many cases, have never been more plentiful in number or of better overall quality. Today, there are hundreds, if not thousands of orchestras around the world able to dispatch a difficult Strauss tone poem with ease. A century and a half ago that number amounted to little more than a mere handful. Also, there have never been more young musicians wanting to form ensembles such as string quartets.
And, despite an apparently shrinking audience, more young musicians than ever are ambitious about learning the craft. Conservatories and university music departments on several continents are overflowing with excellent students. There are now over 500 international piano competitions, each with dozens or even hundreds of prospective entrants, all of whom have mastered large swaths of the most difficult literature. The mind boggles.
Why is that? For many observers nowadays, this is a foolhardy situation, with countless highly trained instrumentalists and singers having, at best, only a modest income to look forward to. But seen in a more positive light, it may also mean that the music-making impulse, despite financial hardship, is not easily quelled. And so, my intention is not to pronounce a a prolonged funeral oration on what once was, although I am very aware of the extent and nature of the problems in the business. Rather, it is to take joy and pleasure in what exists, and to share that joy with anyone who cares to join in.