Classical music looks to the East with hope

Whatever the reason - CDs, young people just not interested or the cost of attending concerts - the popularity of classical music is said to be on the decline. Records companies are simply not recording new CDs the way they used to.

Now it seems that the Chinese might be injecting a revival of interest in classical music - certainly in the East. The NY Times reports:

"With the same energy, drive and sheer population weight that has made it an economic power, China has become a considerable force in Western classical music. Conservatories are bulging. Provincial cities demand orchestras and concert halls. Pianos and violins made in China fill shipping containers leaving its ports.

The Chinese enthusiasm suggests the potential for a growing market for recorded music and live performances just as an aging fan base and declining record sales worry many professionals in Europe and the United States. Sales for a top-selling classical recording in the West number merely in the thousands instead of the tens of thousands 25 years ago."

Read the piece here, and an associated one "Increasingly in the West, the Players are from the East" [also from the NY Times] on all those Chinese artists we are seeing in our concert halls in the West.

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