Saturday, September 08, 2007

Where are the young concert pianists?

Looking for some classical music recordings to gift to a young relative, I was struck by the fact that most of what is available on the shelves at Borders and Barnes&Noble is old stuff, sometimes way older than the intended recipient.

What was there was Schnabel, Horowitz, Brendel, Kempf, Ashkenazy, Gould, from the 50s, 60s, 70s - you get the picture. My guess is that the big labels are not issuing new recordings rather than there is no exciting young talent, or that classical music is dying.

Presumably there are small labels issuing good CDs - but where to find them?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

A similar situation obtains in Hindustani classical music. Indian classical music is not dying - there are so many young musicians today, and academies, gurukuls, institutions dot the land - but no contemporary musician has achieved the stratospheric heights of the pre-70s cast. Some of the new ones show a degree of competence but that's not the same as saying we have a Kishori Amonkar or an Amir Khan on the horizon.