Richard Morrison

Coronavirus is going to change the world’s classical music scene forever

When I became a parent I remember my dad quipping that ‘the first 30 years are the worst’. I’m starting to have similar forebodings about COVID-19. What started as a bizarre new disease in a faroff land six months ago now looks as if it will shape everyone’s life for the rest of 2020, and possibly beyond. Initial hopes that it would be ‘business as usual’ by September now look impossibly optimistic. Where does this leave classical music? Let’s recap quickly on what’s happened already, then try to project into the future.

All arts organisations and venues have shut their doors to the public, and every survey suggests that a deeply spooked public wouldn’t come anyway – maybe not for months, and not until substantial changes are made to seating and front-of-house. Many organisations and individuals are filling the gap by streaming content online – either archive performances (if they have been far-sighted enough to film those over the years) or new material, though the scope of the latter is limited by performers being in lockdown, and by the various technical shortcomings of face-to-face software. Whichever way the streamed content is generated, however, it’s almost certainly being offered to the public free of charge, and that’s hopeless as a business model. Only a very few music organisations – the Berlin Philharmonic and the New York Met among them – were smart enough to set up ways of monetising their online product before lockdown happened (though of course they also suffered massive losses from the cancellation of live performances).

Everyone else? Well, government support for classical music during this period of existential peril has varied enormously. Angela Merkel in Germany and Emmanuel Macron in France have led from the front, offering personal messages of support for the arts and backing them up with big rescue packages. In the United States, no public funds have been made available to support ailing orchestras and opera companies, though there are furlough schemes for temporarily laid-off musicians, as in Britain.

Britain stands somewhere between these two extremes. Mercifully, the furlough scheme has been extended to the end of October, which gives more breathing-space to those organisations able to use it – though the independent London orchestras, where the musicians are self-employed, are among those that don’t qualify. The real problem, however, is that the emergency funding provided by Arts Council England and its counterparts won’t guarantee the survival of venues and performing companies beyond the summer. And there is no sign that British politicians will extend any bailout for the arts.

What’s clear – and I hate to write this – is that not all our arts organisations will survive. Nor will all venues. A lot will depend on the determination of local councils and communities to rally round and stop their own cultural assets from going bust. Towns and cities that care enough will find ways of doing that. Those that don’t will find that, this time, there is no safety-net. Some professional musicians will probably have to leave the business, at least temporarily. And Britain’s youth and amateur music scenes may take years to recover their former zest, particularly as they are so heavily based on choirs, wind bands and brass bands – all activities where a lot of people expend a lot of breath together.

I can see orchestras and smaller ensembles moving to shorter concerts without intervals (to minimise crowding), played to smaller, spread-out audiences with programmes repeated several times. Even then, the economic implications are daunting. We may see ticket prices rise for those in the hall, but also a big effort to persuade musiclovers to subscribe to streamed concerts from their favourite orchestras as well. So much, though, depends on factors beyond the control of musicians and arts administrators. Travel is one obvious area. If people don’t feel safe on public transport, they won’t come to concerts except by car – but coming by car will be even more difficult as more and more space in city centres is reserved for pedestrians and cyclists. And if a 14-day quarantine rule exists at airports, you can say goodbye to seeing your favourite foreign soloists and conductors any time soon. Worse still, British performers won’t be able to fulfil engagements abroad. And that’s before Brexit happens.

The sad reality is that whichever way you assess our future musical life, it doesn’t look pretty. Let’s hope that a vaccine comes along, prestissimo.

Hopes that it would be ‘business as usual’ by September now look impossibly optimistic