Wide-awake producers, despondent television people

Today, music in the media is increasingly listened to via streaming. While sales amounted to 100 million dollars in 2006, they had already reached 19.3 billion by 2023, and the trend is rising. Physical sales fell from 15.1 billion to 5.1 billion in the same period. These are the figures from the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). They relate to music that is only listened to. In contrast, the audiovisual sector is still relatively small. This is less due to the market mechanisms than to the perceptual situation: music can be listened to on the side, in many cases it is imposed on you as a sound wallpaper. Film, on the other hand, forces you to look.

Classical films from Bruckner to Stockfisch

Since Internet transmission technology has enabled the throughput of large amounts of data and thus unprecedented image and sound quality, music films have also become increasingly popular. The concert hall or opera in HD on your home screen is a tempting possibility. Innovative ideas and discoveries are still the order of the day in this up-and-coming media-aesthetic genre. This applies above all to classical music films; in the underground sector, broadcasts of pop concerts with the same old arm-waving fans have long since become an ossified routine.

The surprises that classic films continue to offer could be seen once again at the Avant Première music film fair in Berlin. Every February, authors and producers, internet broadcasters, distributors and rights dealers from all over the world meet here to spend four days examining new productions, exchanging information about the latest developments in the industry and, above all, trading in the new products.

These include Bruckner's Ninth with Herbert Blomstedt, a gem of a music film. Or a documentary about the difficulties of starting a career with the young cellist Anastasia Kobekina. Or the internationally co-produced, eight-part documentary series with short portraits of female composers from Hildegard von Bingen to Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre and Ethel Smyth. And then the crazy project The Stockfish OperaIt traces the route that stockfish took from the Lofoten Islands to Venice thanks to a shipwreck by Venetian sailors in 1432, where it is now a delicacy as "Baccalà Mantecato". The jointly rehearsed Stockfish Opera follows this path: you see the people from the far north performing their play in front of the astonished audience in Venice.

Artistic interest under pressure

A total of 61 showreels lasting 12 to 15 minutes presented around 500 new productions in short excerpts. Admittedly, these were just snippets. But such snapshots provide an insight into the producers' aesthetic orientation and current trends. This inevitably raises the question of the relationship between content and commercial success.

Artistically interesting novelties, even daring ones, still have a chance on the international market, even if not as often as before. But the prospects for the future are rather bleak. The greatest danger today comes from the economic and political uncertainties of the war in Ukraine. It is foreseeable that this will also leave deep scars in the cultural sector. However, it is also down to the public broadcasters, who for some years now have no longer been buying in such contributions, let alone producing them themselves, for fear of appearing elitist and therefore coming under fire. With them as co-producers, substantial financial resources are lost.

Arte is not a solution either, as the Franco-German broadcaster generally only buys what is produced in the two countries. Today, these are increasingly retreating to mainstream products: Le Concert de Paris in front of the Eiffel Tower with an audience numbering in the tens of thousands; Classical music at Odeonsplatzanother fair-weather event, this time from Bayerischer Rundfunk, and the same from Vienna or Berlin. And then, of course, the Vienna New Year's Concert, which is a sure-fire ratings hit all the way to the Far East. The winner for 2025 has already been decided: Johann Strauss, born 200 years ago, at least not an unsympathetic figure. In Berlin, he has now been named the first pop star in music history.

Reiner Moritz addressed this problematic mainstream aesthetic during the presentation of his showreel. The internationally highly decorated producer and author of countless music films since the 1970s, owner of a distribution company with the pretty name Poorhouse International and still a driving force behind the scenes of Avant Première at the age of 87, addressed his colleagues from the public broadcasters directly: "Please show a little more courage and be a little more curious! There are so many interesting things that the audience should know and that you should show them." He was referring to John Reith, the founding director of BBC London, who in 1922 described the task of public broadcasting in three key words: Information, education and entertainment.

Swiss contributions ...

Ticino Television has always participated from Switzerland. Its hallmark is films that do not swim with the mainstream: For example, a funny animated film on Beethoven's 250th birthday five years ago, a documentary with songs by Italian anarchists who fled to Lugano in the 19th century or the great artist film The alchemy of the piano by Jan Schmidt-Garre. RSI was absent this year, which is hopefully not a sign that production is being cut back. But there was still something to see from Switzerland: an informative, beautifully made film portrait of Frank Martin - produced in the Netherlands, where the Genevan spent his retirement.

... and American perspectives

The problems facing music institutions in the classical music sector today are international. Peter Gelb, Director of the Metropolitan Opera in New Yorkwho gave the opening lecture at the Avant Première, explained to me in an interview how things look in America, where subsidies are practically zero and sponsorship and ticket sales are the only sources of money. In the Bermuda triangle of audience-repertoire-costs, Gelb is looking for a solution to keep the huge house of 3,800 seats running at all. After the pandemic, he says, many older visitors stayed away. Before that, ticket sales and income from cinema screenings covered around fifty percent of the costs of around 300 million dollars, and the other half, around 150 million, came from private donors. Because income did not really recover after the pandemic, the proportion of donations now has to rise to around 200 million. "We are," says Gelb, "the only cultural institution in the world that has to contribute such large sums."

He notices a gap between the slowly dying, tradition-oriented audience and the younger, hip visitors and is therefore taking a two-pronged approach: on the one hand Tosca and Aidaon the other hand, contemporary works. However, these only find favor when prominent singers are on stage, the music does not overwhelm the listener and the work is based on intelligent libretti and staging.

Gelb consistently gears the repertoire towards the audience: "What I have never understood is the attitude of many critics who think that opera is made for them. No, opera should be for as many people as possible. That's what Puccini, Verdi and Mozart thought. This is the only way it can continue to exist as an art form, and the only way new works can survive. They shouldn't be written for a shrinking circle of insiders." His conclusion: "I don't know what the future of the Met will look like. I only know one thing: we must continue to develop art and take risks. Falling back or standing still is the surest recipe for failure. With an ageing art form like opera, creativity and the search for something new are the only guarantee of its continued existence."