2009 will bring ...

· Salzburg will go the Bayreuth way, stale, inward-looking and unable to survive administrative red tape.

· Several opera houses will go down next year or will reduce dramatically their activities, European as well as American.

· European institutions will fare better than the US because of the funding system - am I glad I now live in Geneva.

· More classical music will be heard in Asia than elsewhere.

· The Berlin Philharmonic will not even be on the best 10 orchestras in the next stupid and unnecessary poll of the Gramophone - which I have stopped reading.

· Boston will become the US's best orchestra.

· I could add that CDs are really dead, but I just bought two EMI Testament Karajan CDs of concerts from London's Royal Festival Hall. These include a 1984 concert which I attended which remains a lifetime souvenir. Highly recommended if you do not own these.

· The age of jet-hopping artists going from one continent to the other like crazy is gone, save for Gergiev. This being said, too many conductors will be artistic directors of more than one institutions . Could we find a way of making this illegal once and for all?
Those predictions for 2009 are from French born, Swiss resident and sometime Overgrown Path contributor Antoine Leboyer, whose concert and opera going experience is in the same league as the legendary Hedgehog.

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