Recent articles and editorials about the so-called “decline” of the classical recording industry have generally focused on the reduction in new productions owing to the wave of mergers and acquisitions that have overtaken the major record labels. Polygram turned into Universal, and now seems headed into the welcoming embrace of the French conglomerate Vivendi. Warner took over EMI. BMG is “shopping” for a deal. These and other similar corporate maneuvers (such as BMG’s recent restructuring) all have in common one very interesting consequence that has received curiously little or no mention: they have decreased the importance of London as the world’s unofficial recording headquarters. Today Sony Classical, BMG Classics, Universal and Warner are all based primarily in the U.S.A., while these first two are in turn subsidiaries of Japanese and German parent companies, respectively. All have diminished their activities in the British capitol in recent years. The Warner/EMI marriage looks set to continue the trend.
It’s easy to understand historically how London came to dominate the recording industry. At the end of the Second World War continental Europe, including its orchestras, lay in ruins. While never a cultural center of any special musical significance in the early decades of the 20th century, London was (and remains to this day) Europe’s business and financial powerhouse. The city offered: (1) an infrastructure and economy comparatively less damaged by the hostilities; (2) at least two major international record companies (Decca and HMV); (3) several rather scruffy but improving orchestras; (4) a critically close connection to English-language markets the world over — crucial for pop music especially. In retrospect, London’s rise to post-War supremacy seems all but inevitable. In the 50s and 60s a veritable classical music production machine evolved, built around a core consisting of the four major London orchestras as well as select British and foreign soloists, conductors, and ensembles, their activities promoted in turn by an actively (and in some cases rabidly) nationalistic and in any event closely allied musical press.
This is not the place to go into the question of whether or not this situation was a Good or Bad Thing either for English musical culture, or for classical music in general. It can be argued, for example, that the easy availability of so much recording work has artificially prolonged the life of the four main London orchestras, diluting their potential quality by preventing the formation of one or two truly consistent, world-class organizations. On the other hand, thanks to comparatively low session costs allied to thoroughly professional (and in the right hands, potentially exalted) orchestral performance standards, many wonderful recordings got made that probably would not have been possible anyplace else. Anyone who loves 20th century British music (as I do) has many reasons to be content with the way matters turned out. There’s also no question that the concentration of recording activity in one place allowed record producers with vision, such as Mercury’s Wilma Cozart Fine, Decca’s John Culshaw and EMI’s Walter Legge, to compete in creating an extraordinary musical legacy featuring both home-grown and international talent. We may never see anything quite like it again.
Nevertheless London’s Golden Age, for that is surely what it was, is over. Currently, not one of the city’s orchestras enjoys a long-term recording contract of any significance with a major label. Of English conductors, there is only Simon Rattle (who passed over London for Berlin) and, from the older generation, Colin Davis. English pianists? Violinists? Cellists? Sure, they exist, some of them are excellent, and many make recordings for independent labels, but do any have the luster or sales potential of “big contract” names like Jacqueline Du Pré, Clifford Curzon, or John Barbirolli? And don’t say, “Yes, well, there aren’t any truly international ‘stars’ any more.” This isn’t true. The majors still have plenty of talent on their rosters. Think of Rostropovich, Bartoli, Domingo, Barenboim, Argerich, Vengerov, Kissen, Ashkenazy, Perlman, Salonen, Perahia, Mutter, Uchida, Brendel, Hahn, Harnoncourt, Boulez, Ma, and quite a few others. Fine English singers like Bryn Terfel and Jane Eaglen feature in major recordings still, but Covent Garden, source of so many of Decca’s (and EMI’s) finest productions, self-destructed a few years ago and has yet to regain its international reputation.
The evidence of London’s demise really leaps out in considering what has happened to the authentic instrument movement: Hogwood, Pinnock, Goodman, Huggett, The Academy of Ancient Music, The Hanover Band, The English Concert, The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, The Sixteen–all pioneering names. Where are they now? Gone, along with their labels (Archiv, Collins, L’Oiseau Lyre, Virgin). Yet both the early music movement and recordings are flourishing as never before. Just not in England. Now the big names are Christie, Minkowski, Suzuki, Harnoncourt and Koopman, with their attendant ensembles. Of the major English performers, only The Academy of Ancient Music (under Andrew Manze, not Hogwood) still has a long-term contract, but with Harmonia Mundi USA, the American subsidiary of a French label. John Eliot Gardiner is still around, theoretically at least, but we all know what happened to his much touted “Bach Pilgrimage” project, cut off at the knees by Universal (and rightly so, in all honesty).
How about English record companies? Well, there’s Hyperion and Chandos, of course, both excellent and both devoted to English music and English artists, and additionally there are a host of smaller firms. But none of them is a multi-national corporation the way Decca and EMI are (or were), and none records the major London orchestras with any frequency, preferring instead to focus on smaller projects, or to work with the several BBC orchestras, not to mention any number of fine provincial ensembles able to subsidize releases on an individual basis. Will there ever be a time when the very name “London” (as Decca’s stateside imprint was known for years) again becomes synonymous with fine classical recordings? Don’t bet on it. Today Naxos, based in Hong Kong, probably makes more recordings in the U.K. than just about anyone else, and has been burning the torch for British music in recent years more brightly than either EMI or Chandos. Even our old friends Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields record as often as not for a German label (Hänssler), rather than for EMI or Philips.
I have always disagreed with the contention that the classical recording industry is in “crisis.” In order to have a crisis, there needs to be some sort of abnormal problem that requires a drastic solution. But there’s nothing strange about what’s happening out there in the retail world at present. From a purely economic point of view, the situation couldn’t be more normal. Today’s consumer has a wider choice of recordings than ever before, and at terrific prices too. This hardly amounts to a disaster. It’s simply a buyer’s market, which accordingly forces producers in a capitalist economy to do one of two things: sell more to the same people, or expand the customer base and sell more to different people. This is the problem that all manufacturers face when supply exceeds demand. A difficult challenge? No doubt. And there’s little question that the issue has been further complicated by that London recording machine, which over the past two decades indulged in an orgy of mindless overproduction–more it seems to keep its various members employed, rather than because the market demanded new recordings in such quantities. Still, a challenge becomes a crisis only in the hands of the incompetent. In this respect, the industry’s failure to fulfill its primary mission, not just production but equally promotion and above all SALES, speaks for itself.
What can’t be denied, however, is that for individual members of the London classical music establishment, by which we mean the artists, executives, journalists, and various support professions that have entrenched themselves over the past fifty years or so, the crisis is both very real and very personal. Many of these people will lose their jobs. That is sad, but hardly proof that the future of classical music recording itself is in any way under threat. Interestingly, the real instigators and proponents of the “crisis theory” might well be journalists. Finding themselves short of news, facing an ever dwindling circle of media outlets for their work, no longer enjoying insider access, losing “consultant” and freelance pay on various recording projects, and cut off from new business activity taking place on foreign shores, they might well decide to “globalize” their own purely local predicament, making it the recurring subject of their features and editorials. Certain English writers of the inflammatory, ambulance chasing variety are already having a field day chronicling the supposed “death” of classical music.
Yes, we are entering a great period of change, not just in classical music, but also throughout the entertainment industry. In the very near future, new recording technologies, the Internet, and the global economy will reshape how we select and purchase music, video, and many other leisure-time indulgences. Such transitions always produce “winners” and “losers,” and those on the short end of the process frequently spout doomsday prophecies, decry their maltreatment at the hands of evil capitalist corporate “bean counters,” and generally bemoan their lot. It would do the rest of the world good to keep in mind, as the journalistic gnashing of teeth and rending of garments from the U.K and other affected areas becomes a veritable Handel Festival chorus of lamentation, that a crisis for some represents an opportunity for others. From today’s vantage point, we probably know who the (comparative) losers will be. Far more interesting, to my mind, is the challenge of finding and acclaiming the new winners. They’re out there. You can count on it.
David Hurwitz
