Wednesday, 10.14.09, 6:00 am
Creative Destruction: How Labels Like LSO Live and BR Klassik Revive Classical Music—Part 1
The classical music industry has been declared dead several times over in the last few years, but it simply refuses to die. What is happening, however, is that it changes in many ways. The ways of recording, distribution, and promotion are changing, and the companies that once dominated the market have either adapted or faltered. But a new trend aims to keep classical recordings from becoming a taxidermist’s project.
As estimable names in the industry fall by the wayside, new models of production arise. One of the most successful projects has been the establishment of classical labels by orchestras. As exclusive contracts with the big labels—EMI, Deutsche Grammophon/Decca, Sony/RCA, Telarc/Warner—became scarce, and their recording projects fewer and fewer, orchestras thought of new ways to reach new audiences with new recordings. Recording technology had advanced significantly in the last 20 years so that recording concerts live is no longer just an inexpensive but inherently hampered way to preserve an otherwise un-replicable musical event. “Recording technology is so mobile that there are no qualitative differences between studio and live recordings”, says Chaz Jenkins, head of the London Symphony Orchestra’s own label, LSO Live. LSO Live was practically the first label of an orchestra to enter the market this way (the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra’s earlier effort was contained locally).
Mr. Jenkins, one of the pioneers of the orchestra-record-label industry, has been with LSO Live from the first hour since its founding days in 2000. The concept of the label has by now been replicated by many other orchestras, which the London Orchestra’s efforts have paved the way for. The London Philharmonic, Concertgebouw Amsterdam, Mariinsky, Hallé Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic, the Philharmonia Orchestra (in a joint venture with Signum) now have their own labels, to mention just a few, and plenty of them have gotten advice and help from Jenkins and his team.
The goal of LSO Live was not to replicate what labels have done in the past, to do something different, and especially to catch the orchestra’s work in the concert hall. “With 2000 people in front of them, there’s a very different energy and emotion available” Jenkins explains the particular appeal of many of its releases. “When recording companies started to rely on re-releasing recordings, the alarm bells were ringing at the LSO. Concerts and education are core activities for the LSO, but a wider public cannot partake in that. Instead they just see an anemic record industry. If no new recordings are released, then the public starts to see the whole industry as dead, a museum-culture. But there is still plenty interest in concerts and no decline in audiences, so why assume that people are not also interested in new recordings? There should be Beethoven for and from each generation.”
Or Hector Berlioz, as it were. One of the main reasons to found the label and record around the turn of 1999 was the opportunity to record conductor Sir Colin Davis in one of his specialties, Berlioz’ orchestral and choral music, of which the then-music director of the LSO conducted a complete cycle. Success followed afoot. The first Grammy was awarded to the label in 2002 for the recording of Berlioz’ massive opera “Le Troyens”, which sold an astounding 100,000 copies. That grabbed attention for the label which has issued some 70 albums since and sold over three million copies. For the LSO, unlike traditional record companies, the label is not something that needs to be boosted with a marketing campaign, it is a marketing campaign.
Like subsequent orchestra-owned labels, LSO Live also made the decision to go for the small, but important audiophile market, recording in the multi-channel capable, high-resolution Super Audio CD format. “We decided early on to record in the best possible sound, even if only a few people listen to it the finest nuances that the SACD format catches. The quality of CD recordings is limited and our setup was going to be able to capture so much more, so we wanted to produce the best that technology can offer”, so Jenkins.
Part two will follow October 15th and can then be read here.