Using sex to sell classical music is fine, enlisting it to sell pap is just marketing
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Your support makes all the difference.Am I a snob? When I see the Classical Brits and the million-selling CDs in the classical bestseller charts, my reaction isn't to think "hurrah, lots of newcomers discovering the joy of classical music," but to despair that Vanessa-Mae and Bond – the string quartet – could be thought of as classical musicians. They aren't.
Their music is easy-listening pap. It is popular and sells millions of copies. Wonderful. I hope they, and their record companies, run all the way to the bank. But they are no more classical musicians than the Spice Girls, and no less the creations of the marketing men than Ginger and Posh. I guess that does make me a snob. Well frankly, my dears, I don't give a damn.
Three cheers for Sir Thomas for standing up to the marketing juggernaut. The popularity of "Nessun Dorma" during football's Italia 90, and the success of Classic FM, showed record companies that classical music could make money.
The marketing men started to get involved in what had always been the most staid of industries. Out went ageing pianists, and in came pouting Ofra Harnoy. Her poses with a cello on her CDs are as near pornographic as you could have imagined on a recording of Vivaldi.
Ms Harnoy and Lesley Garrett are well trained in the classical repertoire. They may not be the most gifted but they do know how to perform it. Anne-Sophie Mutter is beautiful and the portraits on her CDs don't hide this. She is also one of the greatest of violinists and if her beauty is used to sell recordings and one more person discovers, say, Berg's violin concerto, that's a job well done.
Vanessa-Mae, Charlotte Church and their ilk are different. Put Vanessa-Mae before an orchestra and get her to play Beethoven's violin concerto and the result would be embarrassing. Ask Russell Watson to sing Mozart or Verdi and you would want to run a mile. They are good at what they do – making product which people want to buy. But they are no more classical musicians than I am.
It seems the classical equivalent of Test matches and one-day internationals exist side by side. The worry is that, as in cricket, the more stretching techniques required by classical music will lose out to the crash-bang-wallop of the musical one-day game.
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