Steven Schwartz wrote:

>...the general population [would] prefer to listen to Shania Twain or
>Madonna or the B52s...like Delta blues, classical music is a minority
>taste.

What's essential in liking any music is somehow to be able to bond with it.
It needs to resonate within a person.  The power of the pop music industry
lies in its ability to both support and dictate mass taste.  I imagine that
the causal chain that makes any artist rise to the top of fame in the pop
world is very complicated, involving being in the right place at the right
time, being in many places at many times, ceaseless self-promotion, knowing
the right people, and (last and maybe least???) putting out a quality
product.  But the bottom line is they have a charisma that reaches
out to live audiences.  That we classical aficionados may question to
appropriateness of the audience response doesn't change the fact that it
is very powerful.  But classical music can generate that kind of charisma
as well, as witnessed by the NYPhilharmonic opening gala last night with
Rostropovich performing the Dvorak.  The audience reaction was overwhelming
and genuine.  Here is a master, perhaps a little past his prime as a
technician (although still capable of amazing passagework), performing
with deep love and commitment a work composed from the heart and loved by
millions.  Not only has he brought to the music the insights gained from
his entire performing career (including presumed information about how it
should be played from Dvorak himself via Vaclav Talich, who knew Dvorak),
but also his warm human personality that has lived through the Stalinist
era, supported Solzhenitzin and humanitarian causes, fostered young talent,
etc.  The audience was certainly thinking about all this at one time or
another.

The problem, from my current rural perspective, is that this kind of
bonding with classical music and its artists is primarily an urban
phenomenon, at least in the United States.  I think percentages of the
population are involved here but I'm not sure what they are.  In a city of
13 million even 1% of the population is still going to be 130,000 people,
who might reasonably be said to be classical music lovers.  The same
percentage in my town would be about 50 people, and I'd be hard pressed to
even find 10 (outside of our music department) who could really be said to
know anything about classical music.  TV can bring selected mega-events to
the greater public, but the low level of programming and the infrequency
of anything really challenging makes it almost meaningless.  And an artist
like Slava is still going to attract that 1 per cent or so who already know
who he is.

I know from my 18 years in the boonies (these current boonies at any
rate) that, while there is music education at the K through college level
available right in town, there is NO awareness among instrumentalists and
vocalists of the great performers and performance traditions, unless I or
my colleagues choose to give it to them.  NO pianists know anything about
Horowitz, Rubinstein, Gould, Argerich, Lupu, Kissen; NO violinists know
Oistrakh, Heifetz, Milstein.  The only artists performing today that 99%
of them might know about are Perlman (but he's fading), Ma, and Pavarotti.
Maybe Domingo and Carreras too (obviously).  But many more know about
Yanni, Tesh, and other bozos.  How many student clarinetists here know the
names of ANY principal players working today? 0.  Part of it is because
students have a horn in their hand but they don't really know why.  They
know it's better than working at Dairy Queen.  Sad.

Chris Bonds