Colleagues;
I have now had the opportunity to do some reading (Norman Le brecht ) and I believe that Mr. Lebrecht has it wrong. the misguided management of the record companies and the overwhelming hubris of some of the artists and conductors that make up the bulk of Le brechts book cannot make up for the fact that most americans and denizens of other western countries are woefully under exposed to classical music.
I was listening to a talk radio station the other day and the host identified some of the bumper music ( a Gabrieli canzona ) as Brahams. Well he was off by a mere 300 years.
Rather than get on his case, after all he said that he really didn't know, I'll get on the case of the public school system for not exposing the students to music through an appreciation class. He may not have known who Brahms was but I'll bet he could identify John Williams.
Which leads me to this; some years ago I was playing in a local orchestra to usually half to three quarter house capacity. On one of our concerts we played a suite of music from Star Wars. We packed the house to overflowing. Most of our audience that night was under 40 not the usual 55+ we usually had.
There is a lesson here I think. People are exposed to symphonic music these days in movie theaters and not government run schools. I think that smart music directors might consider programming "Lord of the Rings" along with Mozart. It might be an audience builder.
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