Caught this article on Yahoo about the recent (and very small) expansion in the recording activities of some US orchestras.

Here’s the first couple paragraphs:

NEW YORK (Billboard) - Not long ago, American orchestras considered the notion of creating new recordings an almost impossible dream.

Among the hurdles: longstanding union regulations that made the process untenably expensive in the United States, a market flooded with mid-priced catalog reissues and budget recordings that made new full-priced titles less appealing to consumers, changed financial expectations at major labels (demanding that classical recordings earn their keep rather than be prestige money-losing projects) and the sales woes of the broader recording industry.

But several world-renowned American orchestras have figured out how to start recording again — many adopting a do-it-yourself mind-set that centers on digital retail. Already familiar to indie rock acts, the approach was entirely new terrain to orchestras that in decades past had enjoyed lavish contracts.

The chairman of the International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians is Bruce Ridge. He’s been a tireless representative of the vast majority of professional orchestra musicians in the US, and his analysis is thoughtful and worth considering. I present it here for your consideration.

In recent days, there has been a great deal of discussion regarding the release of a report by economist Robert J. Flanagan, commissioned by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, titled “The Economic Environment of American Symphony Orchestras.” On behalf of the ICSOM Governing Board. I thought I would share some brief observations about the report and the work of Mellon as well as the oft-referred to “Elephant Task Force.”

It seems that every few years or so a new report is commissioned and released about the Symphony Orchestra industry in America that suggests that orchestras are not sustainable, and they generally place the blame, at least partly if not occasionally entirely, on musician salaries. It is difficult to determine just when the industry became so committed to proving to its public that failure is inevitable, but the self-destructive pattern of behavior has been around for decades. A United Press International article from 1970 famously depicts the findings of the death sentence report of that era, titled “25 Symphonies Doomed to Die.”

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I’m convinced that there is no harder test of one’s orchestral mettle than playing a Beethoven symphony - especially the Symphony No. 2.

What a pain (literally - there are next to no rests for the violas, and we’re busy all the time, scrubbing away or doing something that requires just the wrong combination of physical effort and mental concentration) this piece is!

Compared to it, the Wagner Overture to Tannhäuser was a walk in the park (albeit a brisk one tonight!).

Oy, my arms and neck are sore!

More later on our guest conductor and how the concert went last night…