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