The coronavirus hasn’t slowed classical music
A classical music critic in New York City could conceivably never spend an evening at home.
Carnegie Hall presents the world’s leading artists virtually every night during its season; Lincoln Center’s theaters are almost never dark. Then there are the dozens of smaller venues scattered throughout town. Planning a concert-going calendar, then, has always been a balancing act, full of disappointment that you can’t be in multiple places at once.
Then came the coronavirus pandemic, which caused performances to grind to a halt.
I haven’t had the heart to delete events in my own calendar, even though in the coming week there’s no chance I’ll see the premiere of a Kate Soper opera in Montclair, New Jersey, or hear Mitsuko Uchida play Beethoven’s “Diabelli” Variations at Carnegie.
But I also haven’t had the time. In-person performances have been replaced by a deluge of digital ones — livestreams and recently unlocked archive recordings — that have made for a calendar hardly less busy than before concert halls closed. It’s enough to keep a critic happily overwhelmed, yet also wondering whether the industry is making a mistake by giving away so much for free.
The livestreams began immediately, with production values ranging from tinny iphone videos to cinema-ready sophistication. On March 12, the day New York theaters shuttered, pianist Igor Levit gave a lo-fi performance from his living room, while the Berlin Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra played to empty halls and audiences at home. (In retrospect, these groups of 100 or so musicians should have stayed as far apart as the rest of us.)
Since then, a day hasn’t gone by without something to stream. In the past week alone, I’ve been able to watch older performances I missed; ones I had hoped to travel for this spring; ones that would otherwise seem unfathomable, like pianist Maria João
Pires coming out of retirement. If anything, I’m taking in more music than before; the only difference is that now I can be in multiple places — or at least multiple browser tabs — at once.
In breaks from livestreams, you can watch archived films. The Industry, an experimental Los Angeles opera company, has made “Sweet Land,” whose run was cut short by the closures, available on Vimeo for the morethan-worth-it cost of $14.99. (This is one of the few organizations putting a price tag on their work.)
Once you see how many operas are available online, your free time evaporates. Beth Morrison Projects is putting one on its website every week; you can watch Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek’s “Song From the Uproar.” (Another Mazzoli-vavrek piece, “Breaking the Waves,” is streaming on Soundcloud.) Rai, the Italian public broadcaster, is playing Gyorgy Kurtag’s widely hailed “Fin de Partie,” filmed during its premiere run in Milan in 2018.
And Beethoven’s “Fidelio” at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna, canceled, was thankfully recorded. The direction, by actor Christoph Waltz, may be a bit chilly; but the sculptural set, by architects Barkow Leibinger, is a subtle and mesmerizing reflection of the music, propulsive under the baton of Manfred Honeck.
Livestreams have escalated to marathons. The cellist Jan Vogler organized a 24-hour event called Music Never Sleeps NYC, which coincided with Deutsche Grammophon’s globe-trotting relay of solo performances for Piano Day. Never have I felt so productive spending hours on Youtube.
Among the Piano Day artists were Pires, out of retirement for an elegant and lucid reading of Beethoven’s “Pathétique” Sonata; and Daniil Trifonov, both eerie and endearing in a mask and gloves as he introduced himself from the Dominican Republic with a selfie video. Music Never Sleeps was a feel-good miracle of coordination and collaboration across musical forms and genres. When it overlapped, at 7 p.m. Eastern time, with a moment for New Yorkers to applaud out their windows for those on the front lines of the pandemic, conductor David Robertson and pianist Orli Shaham cleverly offered Steve Reich’s “Clapping Music.” Later, Inon Barnatan gave an elegant, at times sublime performance of Schubert’s Piano Sonata in B flat that I hope to one day hear in person.
The two marathons were studies in contrast. Music Never Sleeps was a soft fundraiser — not quite a telethon, but presented with the suggestion that fans donate to the NYC COVID-19 Response & Impact Fund and the Local 802 Musicians’ Emergency Relief Fund. Piano Day, however, was simply a celebration of topshelf talent: artists who could — and have — sold out Carnegie, playing here at no cost to viewers.
Like almost every other livestream recently, Deutsche Grammophon’s felt dangerously reminiscent of the internet’s early days, when prestige journalism — including The New York Times — was available free. Publishers later regretted not monetizing their work from the start; I hope the classical music industry doesn’t end up in the same position.
The world of classical music has never been more accessible. Rarely, though, has it ever been so endangered. And it’s up to all of us to decide just how much it’s worth.