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closeThursday, Jul. 23, 2009
Fort Worth, Dallas symphonies go on the record
With relatively inexpensive in-house recordings, the Fort Worth and Dallas symphonies hope to give listeners exactly what they want to hear
By CHRIS SHULL
Special to dfw.com
The Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra has long produced fine classical music concerts. Now the orchestra also produces fine classical music concert recordings.
Following a strategy espoused by several of America’s largest orchestras, the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra this month released two CDs on its in-house record label, FWSO Live.
The Composer’s Voice features Fort Worth’s concertmaster, Michael Shih, and pieces by contemporary American composers Kevin Puts and Gabriela Lena Frank. Inti is a CD of Peruvian concert music that’s part of music director Miguel Harth-Bedoya’s ongoing Caminos del Inka South American music project.
The CDs were recorded live at Bass Hall over the past three years during the orchestra’s regular weekend concerts.
By recording the CDs — and not relying on an independent record label for production and distribution — orchestras can reduce costs, produce CDs more quickly and respond directly to audience demand, experts say.
"The best way to promote orchestral music is through a recording," Harth-Bedoya said. "It is first of all about the music — to promote the music and make it available."
The process also stimulates the artistic growth of the music director and musicians, said Ann Koonsman, president of the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra.
The main purpose of these classical CDs is not to make money, they say. Instead, recordings will help the orchestra connect more deeply with its patrons and donors — and allow fans to connect more deeply to the music.
"No recording now is a money-maker," Harth-Bedoya said. "They are so expensive with the amount of people involved. It’s huge. So if anybody has that in mind, no recordings will be made."
Instead, CDs bring other tangible benefits to the orchestra.
Recordings can reinforce the artistic legacy of its performers and reflect the musical direction of the ensemble. The music on The Composer’s Voice and Inti has never been recorded before — which will bring attention to the CDs and to the FWSO — from critics, scholars, students and classical-music lovers around the world.
Also, CDs are great for promotion — to give away as thank-you gifts to donors, and to drive traffic to the Web sites, where someone shopping for a CD might buy a ticket to an upcoming concert, and vice versa.
"I see a recording as an extension of the concert experience," Harth-Bedoya said.
Classical music sales down
Sales of classical music CDs — and of music CDs in general — have plummeted over the past decade. According to a 2008 consumer profile report issued by the Recording Industry of America, in 2008 the total value of shipments of all recordings was $8.480 million, down from $14.584 million 10 years ago. Of last year’s totals, only 1.9 percent represented classical recordings, down from 3.5 percent in 1999.
Traditional record labels such as Deutsche Grammophon, Sony Classical, EMI, London/Decca, therefore, are reserving recording projects for the most glamorous — and most bankable — classical music stars.
That makes it more difficult for up-and-coming orchestras like the Fort Worth Symphony to land traditional record deals.
So to get recordings made and out to the public, orchestras are doing it themselves.
The San Francisco Symphony has recorded an acclaimed series of Mahler symphonies; the Philadelphia Orchestra has an in-house label, with recent performances available for download. Ditto the London Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and a host of others.
The Dallas Symphony Orchestra has made numerous recordings over the years, distributed by major labels such as RCA and boutiques such as Dorian and Delos. But the DSO, too, has its own record label. Last fall the orchestra released a CD of Jaap van Zweden conducting Beethoven’s Symphonies Nos. 5 and 7, recorded live at the Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas.
"Recording is an important part of being a tier-one orchestra," said Stephen Cook, vice president of marketing and communications for the DSO. "It is a big money maker? Probably not. Is it an audience-development and an orchestra-development tool? Yes."
Orchestra CDs recorded live are much cheaper than those made at special recording sessions, when musicians are paid at a rate often greater than a regular concert performance.
Not that the musicians record for free. When a concert is also recorded for a commercial recording, the orchestra’s musicians earn an extra fee. For example, for The Composer’s Voice CD, most musicians in the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra received an additional $80 plus an $8 contribution into their pension-fund account — on top of the regular wages they would receive for playing the concert.
"It made it so much more affordable, as long as it’s live," Koonsman said. She helped negotiate the recording contract with the musicians’ union. "The rulebook that goes along with this agreement has enabled us to put out a whole string of recordings that, in the past, we could not have done because we could not have afforded it."
Not to say "affordable" recording sessions are cheap. Koonsman estimated it cost $25,000 to produce The Composer’s Voice CD — which covered musicians’ wages, royalties to music publishers, cover art, booklet printing, CD manufacturing and hiring the sound engineer.
Koonsman said some of the cost of the CD was included in the commission price of the new violin concerto, which is the centerpiece of the recording.
"When I go for a commissioned work, I always build in some recording money because it doesn’t make any sense to commission something if you can’t record it," Koonsman said.
Officials at the Fort Worth and Dallas symphonies say another advantage of in-house recordings is flexibility. Both orchestras record their classical music concerts anyway — for radio broadcast, for study by conductors and musicians, and for historic documentation. But if a performance elicits a particularly enthusiastic response, or if a piece is being considered for a CD anyway, it makes sense to use recordings already made.
"After each weekend’s concerts we’re getting e-mails from patrons saying, 'Gosh, we really would love to have a recording of this,’ " said the DSO’s Cook. "That guides us a little bit" on what to release on CD.
For Fort Worth’s new Caminos del Inka recording, "I’ve talked to various labels and this and that — and they’re still thinking about it after a year," Harth-Bedoya said. "At this point, I find it just a waste of time and energy when we have the recorded music."
Where to find in-house symphony recordings
So far, FWSO Live has released six recordings. (The orchestra also has a catalog of CDs recorded and released under conductor John Giordano.) The CDs are available through the FWSO’s Web site ( www.fwsymphony.org) and at the store in Bass Hall. The DSO’s Beethoven CD is available at www.dallassymphony.com and at the Meyerson.
Online music stores, such as Amazon.com, also carry both orchestras’ older recordings.
Digital downloads of these releases are not yet available, though music from Inti can be heard at Harth-Bedoya’s Web site, www.miguelharth-bedoya.com.
Harth-Bedoya said four or five additional Caminos del Inka CDs are planned, covering music from other South American countries. Cook said the DSO plans to ramp up its recording under conductor van Zweden; another live concert recording from a recent concert at the Meyerson is in the pipeline.
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