No connection to the Paris trial of its former bosses, Universal Music Group has finally moved today to get rid of its weapons of mass classical destruction.
Universal Classics and Jazz, a hybrid construction, is to be shaken down from the top. Its president, Chris Roberts, is expected to leave today ‘to pursue other interests’ (the official line goes) and the dumbing-down policies of the last 15 years are to be reversed.
They didn’t exactly cheer at Deutsche Grammophon HQ when the news of Roberts’ departure was announced at lunchtime, but the wave of satisfaction could be felt three countries away.
Roberts, imposing his lowbrow tastes on a high-class business, demolished Decca and meddled constantly in DG, appointing sucessive label chiefs and obsessively spying on them (as I recounted in The Life and Death of Classical Music). His crossover disasters cost the label a fortune and much of its hard-won credibility.
Market share soared as a result of his dumbing down but core customers deserted and the labels lost their allure. Lang Lang quit in disgust and other prestigious names are said to be on the brink of rupture.
Once Roberts departs – I write these words with trepidation since he’s a corporate animal who has repeatedly dodged the chop – reconstruction can begin. New appointments will follow in the next few days.
For Deutsche Grammophon, this is a Berlin Wall moment – a historic chance to reinvent itself as an entity of acknowledged integrity. It’s drinks all round at the yellow label tonight.
No connection to the Paris trial of its former bosses, Universal Music Group has finally moved today to get rid of its weapons of mass classical destruction.
Universal Classics and Jazz, a hybrid construction, is to be shaken down from the top. Its president, Chris Roberts, is expected to leave today ‘to pursue other interests’ (the official line goes) and the dumbing-down policies of the last 15 years are to be reversed.
They didn’t exactly cheer at Deutsche Grammophon HQ when the news of Roberts’ departure was announced at lunchtime, but the wave of satisfaction could be felt three countries away.
Roberts, imposing his lowbrow tastes on a high-class business, demolished Decca and meddled constantly in DG, appointing sucessive label chiefs and obsessively spying on them (as I recounted in The Life and Death of Classical Music). His crossover disasters cost the label a fortune and much of its hard-won credibility.
Market share soared as a result of his dumbing down but core customers deserted and the labels lost their allure. Lang Lang quit in disgust and other prestigious names are said to be on the brink of rupture.
Once Roberts departs – I write these words with trepidation since he’s a corporate animal who has repeatedly dodged the chop – reconstruction can begin. New appointments will follow in the next few days.
For Deutsche Grammophon, this is a Berlin Wall moment – a historic chance to reinvent itself as an entity of acknowledged integrity. It’s drinks all round at the yellow label tonight.
The former head of Vivendi, Jean-Marie Messier, went on trial in Paris this morning charged with criminal fraud, false accounting and other counts arising from his takeover of the international music group Universal in the freewheeling 1990s.
Among five others charged with him is Edgar Bronfman Jr, a former Universal chief, now head of Warner Music Group. Messier, 53, was forced to quit in 2002 and has been back-pedalling ever since. Bronfman, heir to a liquor fortune, has bounced back.
Neither is expected to go to jail, but the trial will last all month and ought to reveal how the men at the top of the music business bat its fortunes around like so many beachballs.
Messier and Bronfman represent, between them, more than half of the world’s music industry. The indictment is not so much against half a dozen individuals as against the way the global business is run. The impact on classical music was detailed in my last book.
First report appears here. I shall read the verdicts with interest.
The former head of Vivendi, Jean-Marie Messier, went on trial in Paris this morning charged with criminal fraud, false accounting and other counts arising from his takeover of the international music group Universal in the freewheeling 1990s.
Among five others charged with him is Edgar Bronfman Jr, a former Universal chief, now head of Warner Music Group. Messier, 53, was forced to quit in 2002 and has been back-pedalling ever since. Bronfman, heir to a liquor fortune, has bounced back.
Neither is expected to go to jail, but the trial will last all month and ought to reveal how the men at the top of the music business bat its fortunes around like so many beachballs.
Messier and Bronfman represent, between them, more than half of the world’s music industry. The indictment is not so much against half a dozen individuals as against the way the global business is run. The impact on classical music was detailed in my last book.
First report appears here. I shall read the verdicts with interest.
I have just been told that the composer Benjamin Lees has died, aged 86. A delightful man, I last heard from him a few weeks back to say he was writing a second violin concerto, his vigour undimmed by the recent unfashionability of his hard-worked, ever-expressive music.
Ben belonged to no cult, style or school of composers. A student of the iconoclastic George Antheil, he wrote what was on his heart and his mind, and he wrote well. There is a not a misplaced note or stress in the two-dozen works I have heard – invariably on record, since performances were scarce.
Although championed by important conductors from Leopold Stokowski to Lorin Maazel and acknowledged as an American eminence, he fell out of the Manhattan loop and did not merit so much as an index mention in Alex Ross’s panoptic survey of musical modernism. His entry is my own Complete Companion to 20th Century Music is, sadly, short. The fact that most people remembered is that he was born in Harbin, China.
Ben bore rejection with mildness and courtesy, sustained by a strong marriage and a loving family. We dined together once with great gusto and corresponded often. I heard his recent premieres by direct mail and was greatly taken by the third piano concerto and the fifth and sixth string quartets. This is music built to last: it will not fade to dust.
You can hear snippets on his website, or rush out to buy the first violin concerto, recently recorded by Elmar Oliveiro, with John McLaughlin Williams and the Ukraine orchestra. Behind the melodic ease and infallible musical logic lay a passion that burned fierce and had something vital to say.
A full worklist can be found on www.benjaminlees.com. His publisher was Boosey&Hawkes.
