When an obscure Texas pianist named Van Cliburn won the Soviet Union’s biggest music competition in Moscow in 1958, he instantly became an American hero, greeted in New York with a ticker tape parade and invited to the White House to meet President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
When an unknown young conductor named Leonard Bernstein substituted at the last minute for an ailing Bruno Walter in a performance with the New York Philharmonic in 1943, he became an overnight sensation, his triumph chronicled in front-page newspaper stories across America.
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But when Sir Georg Solti, perhaps the most revered conductor in the world, died last week in France, the broad American public barely noticed.
The deaths of Princess Diana and Mother Teresa obviously overshadowed Solti’s, but there was another, more profound reason that Solti’s passing had so little impact: the shrinking stature of Solti’s world–classical music–in America.
Solti–for whom a condolence book was displayed Tuesday in Symphony Center and whose memory will be honored during a Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert on Oct. 25–had survived into an era when classical maestros no longer commanded a prominent place on the American stage.
Thus a survey this week of passersby near a bust of Solti in Lincoln Park showed that few even knew who the maestro was, much less that he had died.
“He’s the guy that invented the cart that went behind the horse–the sulky,” said Neil Rothstein, 55, of Livingston, N.J.
So what happened? Why has an American culture that once faithfully watched Bernstein’s “Young People’s Concerts” on TV and snapped up copies of Time magazine with Solti or Cliburn on the cover largely tuned out the world of classical music?
“Basically, we’ve lost two generations of listeners,” said Jim Murtha, a veteran, New York-based classical music promoter who used to work for pre-eminent impresario Sol Hurok.
“In the 1950s, you could fill up Carnegie Hall with people wearing babushkas who would spend their last few pennies on music. You could present a budding prodigy, and people would come just to check out the newest talent.
“What happened was that in the ’60s, you lost the generation that didn’t want to listen to anything that their parents liked. So they went off into rock music–the hippie generation.
“And then when they had kids, they really couldn’t pass along a love or interest in classical music, because they didn’t know anything about it.”
Whether or not one subscribes to Murtha’s theory, there seems little doubt that the audience for classical music has gotten smaller and older.
An extensive study released last year by the National Endowment for the Arts, “Age and Arts Participation,” found that, “attendance at classical music performances is highest among those born between 1936-45 and lowest in the oldest and youngest (age groups). . . . This could signal problems for the future of live classical music if these younger adults fail to mature into attendance.”
Moreover, classical music faces intense competition of a sort that didn’t exist a generation ago.
The huge, national audiences generated by pop-music cable channels such as MTV and VH-1 and the heavy emphasis that the record industry places on pop, rock and mainstream country (with the classical recordings selling a mere 3.4 percent of the American market, down from 3.9 percent a decade ago) barely gives classical music a fighting chance with the wider public.
“It’s extremely hard to compete,” said Walter Pierce, a longtime classical music executive at the BankBoston Celebrity Series.
“The record companies don’t pay that much attention to us anymore and are cutting down on promotion. You used to have all the big orchestras broadcasting weekly on national radio, and that’s mostly gone.
“So you get an audience that hasn’t heard this kind of music and has no interest in it.”
What’s more, Americans have fewer opportunities to find out about classical music, since there are fewer newspapers covering it.
“There used to be seven newspapers in New York, and at least two or three would cover any artist,” said Murtha, the music promoter.
“Nowadays, most cities have only one, and it’s extremely difficult to get coverage even for the bigger classical stars.”
Solti’s remarkable legacy, of course, has earned him devoted followers around the world.
So even if he represents a European symphonic idiom that many Americans find anachronistic at best, the passionate minority turned out to sign Solti’s condolence book at Symphony Center’s Education and Administration Wing, 67 E. Adams St.
Classical music is “an acquired taste, like getting to like olives,” said Eva Lichtenberg, a longtime CSO volunteer and a past president of the Women’s Association of the CSO.
“But Sir Georg did a lot to make it more popular. He put the CSO on the map internationally and that brought more awareness, created civic pride and sold many, many CDs.”
Rich Carter, 23, who worked with the CSO as a high school senior in the symphony’s Young Composer Project, felt he had to sign Solti’s condolence book.
“Ever since I first started listening to classical music, he’s been an influence on my repertoire,” Carter said.
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But Carter remains the exception in a popular culture that barely recognizes classical symphonic music.
“What has happened is that pop and rock have been accredited and certified, so that people like the President of the United States or Princess Diana embraced it in a way that I would have thought unbelievable 30 years ago,” says William Russo, director of the Contemporary American Music Program department at Columbia College Chicago.
“In turn, classical music got downgraded and ignored. All music today is presented with very little hierarchy, so that reggae is given the same attention as Beethoven, (jazz trumpeter) Booker Little is considered on the same level as (Baroque composer) Georg Philipp Telemann.”
Nevertheless, tributes from classical fans will continue.
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra has placed flowers at the bronze bust of Solti in Lincoln Park and is creating a memorial banner that will hang on the front of Orchestra Hall beginning later this week.
The condolence book will be available from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Mondays through Fridays, noon to 4 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays.
All books will be forwarded to Lady Valerie Solti, Sir Georg’s widow.
One of the condolence book signers assessed Solti’s true value to the city succinctly.
“Chicago without Solti. Unimaginable!”