Classical PRs spill their secrets

Classical PRs spill their secrets

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norman lebrecht

May 31, 2019

Nice little feature on the dark arts in Ludwig Van.

“It’s not as difficult as preparing for a political debate,” Kwan notes. The good news is, the world of classical music is generally a more pleasant environment than other, more cutthroat sectors of the arts and entertainment biz. Certainly, it’s nothing like the harsh light of scrutiny that the average pop star deals with on a daily basis. “We’re in a fragile genre of entertainment. There’s a security of comfort.”

“You don’t find that an issue in the arts,” agrees Victoria Lord. “I’ve rarely seen it.”…

Oh, really?

Read on here.

Comments

  • fflambeau says:

    Very winding and (perhaps) pointless article; same with this column.

  • Jaime Herrera says:

    Carlos Kleiber seldom, if ever, talked to the press. He didn’t need it so what would have been the point? I respect that attitude. He did his job and words after the fact were clearly superfluous. I often wonder how Bach and Mozart and Beethoven and other serious musicians would have viewed today’s press. Would they have described their stuff the way contemporary composers do – contriving pretty word pictures about what they intend to “convey”?

  • Caravaggio says:

    Oh really is right. That individual is checked out, in denial.

  • John Borstlap says:

    Discussing the subject as if in a context of ‘live entertainment industry’ is already putting it on the wrong footing – classical music is not entertainment, it is an art form. Second, although clumsily expressed, Baldwin put his finger on a really painful spot: that much ‘contemporary’ or 20C music is inaccessible, or at least: fundamentally different from the core repertoire of the art form. He was simply right. It is the same fundamental difference between the Louvre and the silly glass pyramid in its midst, or the difference between the core building of the Dresden museum and its ‘modern extension’:

    http://subterraneanreview.blogspot.com/2016/01/leon-krier-on-modernist-esperanto.html

    The kitschification of classical music, meanwhile, turns it into a shark pond of financial and media interests, in a situation of increasing irrelevance in an increasingly populist world. PR advisory companies are only additional commercial and thus parasitical obstacles taking the place of education, signalling the erosion of general understanding. Only if questions like Baldwin’s are seriously addressed, may some improvement be found.

  • christopher storey says:

    The article seems to be rather typical drivel . Why should Baldwin have been “prepared” for an interviewee to refuse to answer a perfectly legitimate question?

  • Richard says:

    Obviously nobody in this group has EVER taken multiple auditions, nor have they played in a major symphony where the musicians cut each other up. Not all symphonies are this way, but a great deal of them are when you have that many egos coming together.
    Just because you don’t experience it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. It’s very naive to think otherwise.

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