Comments on: I finally flame Norman Lebrecht

By: The Naxos Blog on Sequenza21 » The “Classical” music biz – Dead Again? I Think Not.

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 20:31:28 +0000

[...] In Defense of the Billboard Charts: and Here: I Finally Flame Norman Lebrecht. Frankly, I’m surprised we’re still talking about [...]

By: Vachon

Vachon — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 19:38:44 +0000

I thought Anne’s article was misinformed, but Norman Lebrecht takes the brass ring here. Yes, let’s send all classical artists to Europe because they won’t make millions on CD sales in the U.S. I guess he doesn’t download?

By: properdiscord

properdiscord — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 18:23:51 +0000

Some of it.

By: properdiscord

properdiscord — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 18:18:54 +0000

He did approve some of it. If I hadn’t been so mean, he might have approved all of it, but I doubt it. I don’t think there was anything offensive or irrelevant about…

“You say that classical music doesn’t sell in the United States, when in fact the US and Japan remain the two largest markets for classical recordings.”

…but that didn’t make the cut.

By: Jimmy

Jimmy — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 18:17:38 +0000

ouch. He did just publish your comment BTW…

By: properdiscord

properdiscord — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:38:36 +0000

I’m looking forward to hearing your album.

Perhaps Norm should stick to fiction. It sometimes looks like he does.

By: Amanda Ameer

Amanda Ameer — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 15:50:59 +0000

Did Lebrecht offer any explanation for why he wasn’t approving your comment?

By: Jimmy

Jimmy — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 10:00:29 +0000

Ha! Not quite sure what he thinks of me. We tweet occasionally and he’s a facebook friend (the closest I have to real friends), but no idea if he approves of my playing…
Will be sending him my new CD soon though so we shall see.
You should check out his first novel though – Song of Names – extremely well written and very moving.

By: properdiscord

properdiscord — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:26:23 +0000

I’ve been trying really hard to understand Norm’s perspective. It seems like he places a lot of value on the things certain people tell him. He told me that he’d known every leader of classical music industry for the last 30 years. I guess that if you asked the people who were running the business in 1980, they’d tell you that the game was up, mostly because almost none of them are working in the record business today. It’s not what it was, but that that doesn’t mean it’s over, and the continuing success of both Harmonia Mundi and Naxos just goes to show that there’s space at both ends of the market.

I’m sure he enjoyed hearing from you. He probably thinks you’re one of the horsemen of the apocalypse, doesn’t he?

By: properdiscord

properdiscord — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:04:24 +0000

Dan: Thanks for reading.

Everybody else: Buy one of Dan’s shirts. He needs money for LSD.

http://www.cafepress.com/danielsjohnson