Many more people listen to classical music on streaming services than attend live concerts. Streaming is forcing important changes on recorded classical music, and these changes are little understood, or, in some notable cases, not understood at all. As an example, on the music industry-endorsed Slipped Disc classical influencer Norman Lebrecht gives an enthusiastic welcome to Apple Classical , saying: 'In a Shostakovich tenth symphony from Berlin, the internal definition seemed to me clearer than the orchestra’s own-label recording and, weirdly, than my aural memory of hearing it in the hall. If this is to be the future quality of sound, bring it on'. In his linked article for The Critic headlined Apple of My Ear Lebrecht explains that he auditioned Apple Classical using the Dolby Atmos/Apple Spatial Audio format. So we need to dig down into the use of PR-speak such as "the sound on Apple is as good as it gets, actually better" by a prominent music critic
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It's not as if the whole farrago had already been seen and dismissed in the UK two or three years ago, in - oh, I don't know, some provincial backwater like, erm, Cardiff. Presumably none of our world-class London commentators managed to make the trip that time. Or maybe they just don't read reviews of events at no-mark hicksville venues like the Wales Millennium Centre.
We provincials have our uses. We could have saved them the expense of buying four expensive tickets, for starters...
I did a guest spot on a BBC Radio 5 Live chat show about the Proms the other night. I was sat alone in the BBC studios in Norwich, everyone else was in the London.
When I mentioned the excellent Les Orientales festival in France the BBC presenter sneered at me, saying not many people can afford to go to French music festivals.
Actually they can. If, like me, you live more than a hundred miles from London (or in Cardiff even), going to a Prom involves a night in a London hotel.
I can currently get my car and two people across the Channel and back for half the price of a London hotel room which comes without breakfast, but does come with black mould in the shower and burn marks in the carpet.
The media, and the BBC in particular, think that London is the beginning and end of the classical music world. They are missing a lot as a result.