Thursday, May 05, 2005
Outsourcing Orchestras
I'm looking at the back cover of a new Naxos recording of George Whitefield Chadwick's Symphony No. 2 and his Symphonic Sketches and I am informed that these long-missing-from-the-catalog works were recorded at the Grand Concert Studio of the National Radio Company of Ukraine in Kiev, December 17-21, December 2003. In fact, many of the CDs in the Naxos "American Classics" series were recorded in Eastern Europe where non-union musicians and inexpensive recording facilities make it possible to record obscure works and still, through clever marketing of the kind Naxos has in spades, turn a small profit. Added to other small profits, that produces the world's most successful label. I suspect, although I don't know for certain, that many of these recordings also benefit from modest subsidies from foundations or, perhaps, composers or their families themselves.
I sometimes get review CDs in a series called "Music from Six Continents" which is produced by a company called Vienna Modern Masters. On its web site, there is the following note: "For the present, for recordings VMM itself supervises, the company prefers to record in Eastern Europe, where superb orchestras and soloists are particularly accustomed to recording new music at moderate cost."
What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is outsourcing. American jobs being lost to cheap overseas labor. And, you know what? Gazing down from the "cheap" seats on the complacent, well-fed faces of the chronically underachieving New York Philharmonic and a maestro so overpaid he can spend $780,000 of his own money to rent an opera house and company in London, I find it hard to muster much sympathy.
posted by Jerry Bowles
2:07 PM
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