Minimalism for All: Live Classical Music at the iTunes Music Store
It’s only been a few weeks that the iTunes Music Store has been selling live classical music concerts, direct-to-download. Beginning with a rather staid concert by the New York Philharmonic, performing a few of Mozart’s last symphonies, this series by Deutsche Grammophon called DG Concerts looked to be more of the same. Yet this morning, when checking the iTunes Music Store for new releases, I was surprised and delighted to see two more releases in the DG Concerts series by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, from their Minimalist Jukebox series of concerts.Minimalism is a form of contemporary music based on repetition, which first arose in the 1960s. (The seminal work of minimalist music is probably Terry Riley’s 1964 composition In C.) The best known composers in this area are Philip Glass, Steve Reich, John Adams and Terry Riley. I’ve long been a fan of this type of “gradual music”, and had many occasions to attend performances of the key works in this genre in the early 1980s when I lived in New York.
So I can only salute the initiative of the Los Angeles Philharmonic to take the risk and release these two concerts on the iTunes Music Store. The first such concert features music by Arvo Pärt and Louis Andriessen:
- Pärt: Tabula Rasa
- Andriessen: Racconto dall’Inferno (U.S. premiere)
- Andriessen: De Staat (The Republic)
The second concert is an all-Reich program, featuring:
- Reich: Variations for Winds, Strings, and Keyboards
- Reich: Three Movements for Orchestra
- Reich: Tehillim
Both concerts include PDF files with program notes, though you need to zoom in to read the small text. I don’t understand why the notes are CD-sized, unless DG plans to release these recordings as CDs later. Digital formats shouldn’t be fettered by size; they should be much more readable, since size, for once, doesn’t matter.
A concert of Mozart music is a banal yet safe offering, attempting to attract listeners with unthreatening music. Any Mozart fans (and I’m not one of them) certainly has recordings of his last symphonies, so it is unlikely that real classical music fans would go for this concert, unless it is for the novelty of downloading a live classical concert that is not available on CD (and that is, I must admit, fairly priced, at $10 for a 100-minute concert.)
But offering “new” music, less-familiar works, is an excellent way not only to get classical music downloaded, but also to help listeners discover lesser-known composers for a mere $10. I’m curious as to how successful this series will be. Will classical music fans drop a sawbuck out of curiosity and, perhaps, discover new forms of music they hadn’t heard before? Will other iTunes Music Store users be tempted by the idea of downloading a live classical concert of music they’ve never heard of?
Bravo to both DG and the Los Angeles Philharmonic for this initiative. I’m looking forward to seeing more such music on the iTunes Music Store. My only regret is that they don’t offer more from this interesting series of concerts. This is undoubtedly because of recording or distribution contracts with the different performers; yet another sign that lawyers ruin culture. But these two concerts will be a great way for those unfamiliar with minimalism to discover this interesting and exciting form of music.
As long as you’re here, answer this week’s poll (look to the left) about downloading live classical concerts.
