His concert was free. There are venues, especially colleges, that welcome this type of thing. They either pay the artist an "honorarium," or pay a compliment instead: "you get free airfare and hotel for the weekend, and we will invite you to a celebratory dinner with the Dean." The concert itself is free to students and faculty and, perhaps, the general public if the hall is big enough and the odds of filling it small.
Well, why not go to a free classical concert once in a while? The artist in question was getting good reviews as a Chopin interpreter, had recorded a cycle of Mozart concertos, and had a repertoire that included most of the standards, with only a few modern items that might try anyone's patience, like stepping on Glass.
I had a fleeting thought: why is this guy sticking with Chopin, and THOSE guys? Is it that the dwindling audience for classical expects this? Is it that the few people who actually want to see a live pianist would want to see a live rendition of works by famous composers that are less well known now than Taylor Swift and Kanye West?
I thought, maybe this guy could expand his bookings or get more attention if, instead of competing with the huge catalog of Chopin on CD, he featured lesser known but worthy composers, like, oh, Amy Beach or...Billy Joel. Has anyone added Billy Joel to the classical repertoire, or do they stop at Alkan and Satie? Was Billy's album, now sixteen years old, given any serious reviews in the first place?
I checked online and began to read some of the reviews on Billy, and most, reflecting on him being such a nice guy, were nice. Or tolerant. People Magazine, who probably didn't even have a regular columnist for classical, had somebody who probably spoke for the average Joel fan: "Joel’s Kubla-Khan-in-the-Hamptons lifestyle may be going to his head. Bottom Line: We liked you just the way you were." The more serious Gramophone, allowed, "For these 10 works‚ composed during the past eight years‚ are nothing less than a nostalgic look back at the piano pieces of Chopin‚ Liszt and other masters of the keyboard recreated in their image by someone who clearly has a soft spot for them...it would be a delusion itself to suggest there was more on offer here than a set of pastiche pieces. Joo plays all of them sympathetically and is recorded in sound that leaves nothing to be desired."
Most reviewers felt the material was imitative of the composers he grew up playing. Billy didn't play these pieces himself; he hired his friend Richard Joo, who obviously never became very well known as a concert artist. Who knows, he might be teaching somewhere, or playing free concerts at colleges. I interviewed Billy longer than 16 years ago, and he did mention being classically trained. Was he doing anything more than a tribute to Liszt or Chopin by writing in their styles? Not really. Was he expanding on the more modern romantic works of Ravel or Alkan? Not really.
Does anyone care about classical music these days? NOT REALLY. So the future for most classical pianists who put in an aching amount of hours perfecting their craft, is playing free concerts, relying on grants, selling CDs after the show, and probably teaching. It's been several generations since people went to concerts by the rivals Rubinstein and Horowitz and then walked into a record store asking for an album. It's been several generations since anyone could name a famous conductor (Bernstein!) Who was the last superstar pianist? Kissin? Brendel? How many people in a major city know the name of their orchestra's conductor. Tell me, anyone in San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, London, New York...
In many places, the ballet, the opera, the symphony hall...are in danger of closing.
In researching the apathy toward Billy Joel's album, I came across a grim piece back in 2001 which I thought I'd simply quote rather than link. It's wonderfully snarky about what passed for "classical" music then and is just as accurate now. In fact moreso, because there hasn't been anyone taking the place of pop singers like Bocelli, or pseudo-classical composers like Sir Paul.
This piece comes from the Telegraph (UK) and is by Norman Lebrecht. Bring on the snarky truth, Norm:
05 Dec 2001
FORTY years ago, just before the Beatles turned the world on its head, one in every five records bought and sold across the world was classical. About 20 years ago, in the rainbow dawn of compact disc, classics accounted for 10 per cent of global sales. This year, classical music is down to three per cent, and falling.
Gloomy as this might seem, we have not hit bottom yet. This week's top-selling "classical" album in the US is piano music composed by Billy Joel, a faded rock star. The top two albums in Britain are punched out by Russell Watson, an industrial-strength tenor who assaults football terraces with pop ballads and ice-cream arias in marshmallowy, Mantovani-like settings.
These are the core of contemporary classics. Were the charts to be purged of such mongrelisms, there is little doubt that classical sales would fall below one per cent and the business would be shut down.
The gentle subsidence of classical labels has been turned, over the past five years, into a full-scale wipeout as corporate executives have sought to justify their six-figure salaries with ever more frantic exhumations of exhausted commercial material. EMI trotted out Sir Paul McCartney with pseudo-classical piano tinklings. Decca dredged up Andrea Boccelli from the Italian pop racks and redesignated Nana Mouskouri in her Seventies spectacles as a classical diva.
Deutsche Grammophon, arbiter of high art, employs the operatic baritone, Bryn Terfel, to squeeze out songs from the movies and the Swedish soprano Anne-Sofie von Otter to duet with a toneless Elvis Costello. Had Sir Elton John not retired from making new records last weekend, his keyboard elegies would by now be the target of a classical bidding war.
The leader in the rush to generic contamination is the label known as Sony Classical, which has come to stand for anything but. Sony is headed by a former orchestral publicist, Peter Gelb, who set out "to redefine the classical label . . . to return to the idea of classical music as an emotional experience for the listener".
His greatest coup so far is the classical rebirth of Billy Joel, who has sold 100 million records in 25 years - which counts as an emotional experience for a corporate boss. Joel, whose gift was sparked at 14 on seeing the Beatles steal the Ed Sullivan Show, hit the big time in 1977 with The Stranger, the biggest-selling album of its day. He won a shelf-load of Grammys and a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
But his last big hit was River of Dreams seven years ago. So Billy Joel has fallen back on a boyhood love of Chopin and Schumann, and started turning out little waltzes and reveries for solo piano.
His Fantasies and Delusions, performed by Richard Joo, a British-Korean pianist of previously clean record, was recorded at the Konzerthaus in Vienna by a rigorous classical producer, Steven Epstein. It pays over-fond homage to the great Viennese composers - though perhaps most of all to the wacky Frenchman Erik Satie, whose musique d'ameublement, aural wallpaper, it strongly recalls. This is not music that will stop anyone in his tracks, except perhaps a maitre d'hotel in a palm court lounge.
Sony Classical trots out a line about "growing the classical market" with celebrity glitz, but the excuses sound as hollow as the strategy itself. The rest of Sony's seasonal list is made up of Placido Domingo duetting in Vienna with Tony Bennett, Vanessa Williams and Charlotte Church; of Joshua Bell and John Williams accompanying a banjo man; and of Yo-Yo Ma, the most charismatic of cellists, playing movie themes, tangos and country and western. Only two releases are definably classical - a pair of concertos from the sophomore Hilary Hahn, and a set of orchestral pieces by the Finnish composer Esa-Pekka Salonen, the only conductor left on Sony's books.
Nothing criminal in that: it's a free market and a record label has a right to make an honest buck. Crossover does not cause cancer. Nor does it corrupt youth - if only because youth spends its pocket money on violent rap albums and would not be seen dead listening to something labelled "classical". So where's the harm?
Look at any record store, and you'll see just where. What the Billy Joels and Russell Watsons do is burn up the marketing budgets of the so-called classical labels on which they appear, starving serious music of the oxygen of publicity, space on the shelf and room in the charts. Crossover is not an aid to classical renewal, rather an act of classical euthanasia. Billy Joel, for all his love of good music, is driving a mighty nail into the coffin of classical recording.
* * * * Back to today. Was it a sign that there's still life in the world of classical music...or not?
The noon performance was at a venue seating 500 people. It was almost full. But, it was full of older white people. It would've been a much smaller crowd if you only picked out the people with dark hair. Oh, and two Asians. I saw two Asians.
The program consisted of three sonatas; Schumann, Mozart and Chopin. Safe bets. The artist was excellent, and the crowd gave him a fairly good standing ovation. Remember, these are older white people. Maybe a third couldn't stand. Or not for long. Some, as usual, were tottering for the exit before the encore, which was the most bombastic of the Chopin etudes. I loved it.
The pianist made his way up the left aisle as fast as possible, because...most important...he was signing copies of his CDs. Do NOT have people walk by a table that has some lady selling CDs but no pianist autographing them!
Especially when the CDs are all from your own company. You keep all the profits.
Does this mean that it's still possible to make a living as a classical pianist? Let's not be too pessimistic. It's possible if someone is an excellent performer, is a bit theatrical (striped pants, a dark maroon jacket) and has good facial expressions (this fellow seemed to especially enjoy the more whimsical passages, which had his lips puckering). The back of the free program noted that one could donate and be a "patron" of the noon recitals. The form read: "I wish to make a gift at the following level..."
It started with $10,000. Then $5,000, $2,500, $1,000 and $500. The lowest amount listed was $120. Then there was "OTHER." Which might make you a patron, but a cheap one. You might not even be on the mailing list.
Before the concert began, a rep for the venue turned up onstage to announce next week's attraction, and to remind everyone to donate: "Our concerts are free, but they are not free to produce." They depend on grants, the good nature of the college or university or library putting on the show, and "especially, on generous individuals to provide support."
Support the artist? ME? I generously bought a double Chopin CD for $20, which the artist autographed. Which gave me the opportunity to ask a mild question -- did he listen to previous masters, like Novaes, Rubinstein and Brailowsky, or not want to be influenced? "Of course I listen to past masters," he said, yes, he was finding his own way and his own interpretations.
And is the world interested in what was, after all, excellent but not bizarrely unique versions of classical sonatas? The world's interest seems to shrink more and more. White audiences are shrinking more and more. Classical radio stations are shrinking more and more. People are less interested in going to live shows in general because of the expense, and even free shows require a certain amount of leisure time. And what if this man's show was on at the same time as an NFL game, where one can enjoy watching somebody take a knee because he doesn't like a piece of music he's hearing?
I can only add that as most people know, CD sales have tanked. People don't want them. They don't want DVDs. They don't even want books. What they want on their shelves, I have no idea, but they take no pride in any of THAT stuff. They used to want mp3 files but hell, that could take up an external hard drive the size of ONE BOOK. Now, the preferred method of listening to music is STREAMING, of which there are many free services that imitate the radio stations of old. You can listen to SPOTIFY with some commercials. You can go to YouTube and hear just about any music you want, and with an adblock filter, not even be bothered by a few random commercials.
It turns out the person selling the CDs at the concert was the co-owner of the pianist's record label. I asked her if she was planning on issuing very unusual, esoteric material. I said, "Some small labels seem to thrive by offering offbeat things that haven't been recorded too often. For example, there's hardly any recordings available of Kabalevsky's pieces for the piano, especially the witty and often quite charming pieces he wrote for young pianists just learning the instrument." She said that the label was finding its way. It would release what the artists felt moved to record. If the artist had a fondness for a particular Chopin sonata, Moussorgsky, Tchaikovsky, and wanted his version out there, it would arrive. To be commercial, and be the only label to have Kabalevsky, or a work of Amy Beach or Tausig? Perhaps not.
I volunteer at a charity shop that USED to sell CDs for $3 each. Now it's down to $1. Almost nothing is selling anymore. The last holdouts were the snotty fans of classical music, who would peer with curled lip and narrowed eyes at anything that wasn't SEALED, and hold the CD up to the light, and ask, "Can I return it if there's a problem?"
Most of the creatures who frowned and put back a Naxos CD are now gone. Gone where, I have no idea, since most of them insisted mp3 sound was beneath contempt. My guess is that since there are so few new pianists around, and fewer orchestras creating unique versions of a Beethoven symphony that would rival the dozens already out there, they are content to sit on what they have. They sure as hell aren't experimenting with modern classical composers. Challenging and obscure titles sit until they must be culled and tossed in the trash. Anything from Naxos goes into the trash eventually, as do items from budget labels. Opera tends to go directly to the trash. Even rare imported mono doesn't sell, as the people who rhapsodize over Callas or even Stratas are either dead or dying.
Millennials aren't too interested in classical music, any more than they are interested in black and white movies, or listening to old radio shows. Hell, they not only don't want to listen to "Lights Out," they don't care about "The Twilight Zone." And so the people who barely want an album of "soft" light classics (Pachelbel's Canon) don't even want a "Beethoven's Greatest Hits." The acidic remarks roiling up from the Telegraph reviewer's gizzard, probably couldn't even get printed today. Not for money. How many papers have a movie critic or a book critic, much less a classical music critic? Who reviews CDs anymore?
The good news is that none of this is bad news to Beyonce or Adele.
