Classical music has been prominent in the art industry for centuries due to its elegant pieces and harmonic music. Ensembles such as the London Symphony Orchestra, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra said they use their radio, live concerts, and channels to play their music on digital platforms from Spotify and Apple Music to their daily radio stations.
The orchestras have tours, performing globally annually. In an interview, Chris Millard, the Head of Press and External Affairs for the LSO, said they conducted in Australia for the first time in 10 years, going to Japan regularly, and have plans to visit the U.S. in a couple of years.
“Those tours are planned, you know, for four or five years in advance,” Millard said. “We do a lot of touring … the other things have to fit in around that.”
Multiple orchestras have additionally created student programs to enhance younger generations’ music. VPO has an orchestra academy for young gifted talents, inviting schools and supporting youth orchestras to keep the music. CSO has college ambassadors who “keep students at Chicago area colleges and universities connected with CSO concerts.”
Millard said the LSO provides opportunities for promising musicians at an early age who may not have had the same opportunities as others.
“We run various programs, which we work with the conservatoires in London and provide auditions, and then they can get onto schemes as a string scheme specifically for string players,” Millard said. “We also run something called the East London Academy … it’s a two-year program of teaching and mentoring them. The idea of that is that hopefully some people go on to study music and higher education and maybe end up in the orchestra.”
Orchestras have collaborated with production studios to produce music for games and films. These varieties of music allowed more attention to the orchestra, gaining new audience members.
Millard said the LSO has worked on various productions, including “Legend of Zelda: Suite,” the original “Star Wars” movies, and most recently, the film “Maestro.”
“We have been making music for films, right from when the films for sort of started, particularly in the early days, William Walton and people like that in the war in the Second World War,” Millard said. “About that time, we were the first orchestra to do that kind of work in the U.K.”
LSO also has plans to release a series next summer featuring all the music they have played for films over the years because they’ve done multiple British, French and American films.
“When there’s enough material there to make kind of kind of interesting sort of studies that we also will do that kind of ones we did one,” Millard said.
Despite the global upheaval caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, classical music remained resilient. The orchestras successfully navigated the complexities during this challenging period. The LSO, for example, distanced its 70 players from each other across their building, testing constantly because they had weekly concerts.
Though people have believed orchestra audiences have dwindled, it’s been the opposite as younger generations begin filling their halls more.
According to Eileen Chambers, the Communications and PR Director of the CSO, there has been a wave of renewed interest in classical music among college students in the Chicago areas, with “nearly 600 students reserved tickets for our most recent College Night at a CSO concert,” Chambers said.
“At Symphony Center in Chicago, we continue to see great interest in classical music programs of many kinds,” Chambers said. “In the 2022/23 season, we presented more than 400 unique programs…featuring classical music concerts, including those performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.”
Through the years, classical music has adapted to the times and remains well-known today. As digital technology and different genres evolve, classical music has been rising more than ever. To receive more attention, Millard believes that schools should focus on and improve their music education.
“We’re trying to lobby our governments to redress this kind of terrible erosion of music education and opportunity. Those subjects are disappearing, and then you’ll get to the point where you’re losing the next generation of musicians,” Millard said. “Music had a kind of different role in people’s lives. And people play because that’s how you entertain yourselves and your friends. So inevitably, that’s been diluted over the years. But the flip side of that there are now more music genres that evolve all the time.”
