Classical Music: An Endangered Art?
Part 1

Hear additional comments from Norman Lebrecht
(Real Audio 2.0 14.4)

Interview 1 (2:18)
A broad view of the current state of classical music.

Interview 2 (4:12)
The changing environment in European vs. American concert halls. The "false economy" of the business, and the effect on symphony morale.

Interview 3 (1:50)
The necessity of aiming for "high standards" in our culture, in music and art.

Interview 4 (2:03)
Grim predictions for the future.

This February at a public radio conference in Atlanta, a music critic named Norman Lebrecht incited accusations of Nazism from public radio music directors from around the country. The bearded, bespectacled British writer pounded his podium, shouting to the crowd, "We in classical music MUST be elitist to raise people's consciousness; to make them better people." Pretty strong words that got the on-their-feet reaction they were intended to provoke. Because Norman Lebrecht is a man with a cause - a cause he sees as no less than ensuring the entire future of classical music.

Lebrecht: There will always be some form of what we know as classical music, and some people who want to listen to it. But it's quite clear that it is no longer central to our society. It has been pushed further and further to the margins, and what we're seeing at the center of the classical music world is disappearing audiences, vanishing record sales, and a state of total confusion as to how music can recover its audience.

Lebrecht: Over the next five years, I think we're going to witness a decline of about a third of the world's orchestras. There are about 500 full-time professional symphony orchestras in the world, half of them in the United States. That is going to come down very, very radically. All the conditions are against us: the lack of social support, the declining audience, the greed of the big stars. All of these things combined are going to result in what I suppose can only be called a massacre.