Ouch!

'I would like to hear this concert for a whole host of reasons ... I hope to hear the VPO in better shape than one year ago at their Prague Spring Festival performance' ~ Jiri Belohlavek (left) previews the Vienna Philharmonic BBC Prom conducted by Daniel Barenboim on September 4 in today's Guardian.

But is the pot calling the kettle black?
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Classical music is a right-brainer

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Whichever way you look at it classical music is not in good health. Concert attendances are down, arts funding is drying up , classical venues are increasingly dark, recording release schedules get thinner and thinner, orchestras are being downsized or disbanded , and mainstream media coverage is disappearing. Yet the classical fraternity remains in denial of an irreversible cultural change that looks increasingly likely to leave the classical genre as no more than an anachronism . Why? In 1932 the German-born Swiss philosopher Jean Gebser identified that a change was taking place in Western consciousness, and that this change was impacting on science, art, literature, philosophy and other disciplines. His thesis was that human consciousness is in transition, and these transitions are abrupt but overlapping mutations, rather than smooth transitions, and these transitions involve cerebral and physical changes. Jean Geber's thesis is developed by Dr Iain McGilchrist with his theor...
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