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In Reply to: RE: Yes, I agree. posted by rbolaw on August 23, 2015 at 08:15:34
I hear people say all the time that physical media are already dead, classical included.
I disagree. Now, for (no snobbery intended; I recommend Sonos and Pandora when appropriate) the "Pandora" classical listener, or an Internet radio listener who gets 100% of their listening online and they are fine with that, physical media might as well be dead.
However, for the deep-catalog serious classical listener to different versions of the same works, or new recordings of obscure works, I say not so fast.
I recently recommended Stanford's "Stabat Mater." If it is on TIDAL, there will be no credits or liner notes. Arkiv Streaming quotes a review, but not the liner notes, and credits are minimal. Now, those of us who remember pre-Vatican II Masses perhaps might not need texts and translations, but...
I particularly think that classical physical media have a future for choral, vocal, oratorio, and opera music, especially opera. Printable .pdfs simply don't cut it.
But the future does look very grim for performers who are not already successful or well-funded. Back when CDs were still new and booming, a moderately successful classical release might over its first two or three years hit 15,000 copies in all formats--LP, cassette, CD.
Today, a moderately successful classical CD might sell 2,000 copies (scanned at retail, not just shipped to a store or warehouse) in its first year and have hit not more than 5,000 units when sales eventually just drop off.
Which makes the classical marketplace very bizarre--Chandos' great new Rachmaninoff "All-Night Vigil" at $19.99 versus Decca's Solti Eagner "Ring" on 14 CDs at $39.95...
Can the center hold?
Nyet.
JM
Follow Ups:
Classical listeners are just too freaking old to figure out how to stream our favorite tunes!
Present company excepted (and accepted), as always.
The hearing aid feedback at Davies Hall last week for Yuja Wang concert was enough to give one serious pause. It was the annual All San Francisco Concert with all tickets given away free to 'Community Organizations' and definitely Blue Hair City.
Row 'A' of the balcony but far enough away that my aging eyes got little entertainment.That, plus the fact that it was obviously a fancy dress rehearsal for their upcoming tour? As such, Yuja was actually using sheet music and tuning pages as she played! And, at least from my perspective, MTT was somewhere else in the building and there didn't seem to me to be a lot of connectedness between piano and orchestra, keeping in mind that it was Beethoven's 4th which kinda lets each play in turn.
A fault of MTT that I've witnessed on more than one occasion! Sometimes our boy is 'there' and other times, not so much.
So bottom line, not the best seat in the house for enjoying Yuja and not the best piece of music to judge her by.
Edits: 08/23/15
I think I may have mentioned that I had a concert with my German cello/bassoon friends (who are just back from Japan, where they played for the Emperor and Empress) in Mill Valley during the time of Yuja's concert - and we also encountered problems with stray hearing aid tones and beeps among the audience members. Those tones are up in such high frequencies, that the users themselves don't hear them (because of their hearing loss), but I noticed the sounds all too clearly unfortunately. Aside from that, I thought our concert went pretty well.
Now that so many folks have quite smoking, at least in the classical music set, I guess we have to go with the times.
I thought it was kind of funny! Might have been the oldest audience I've ever seen at Davies. Real terror entering the men's room at intermission as the line was moving SLOW!
Not as bad as Flint Center for the Peninsula Symphony, where the buses from the retirement communities line the streets for what seems like miles before and after concerts, but pretty bad.
There was one passage with a few high loud piano notes that seemed to kick off the feedback on one poor guy hearing aid. Every time Yuja hit the set of notes the hearing aid would reply! This guy was up in the cheap seats with me but it was so loud I know she must have heard it.
Haven't read the reviews yet but hopefully Yuja and MTT got locked into things for last weekends concerts.
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