Author Profile: Phillip Sommerich

PPL announces increase in income despite declining record sales

PPL, the UK-based organisation which licenses recorded music played in public, has revealed and increase in its income by 11% to £170.8m, despite a tough market and declining CD sales.

IMZ ends three-decade association with Midem

The IMZ, the leading international showcase of music and dance film and tv programmes, is ending a 30-year association with the Midem music industry trade fair and moving to Berlin.

Record distribution: two down, more to follow?

The decline in CD sales and high-street music retailers has led to the closure of two classical music distributors on opposite sides of the Atlantic, with the future of a third being questioned.

Classical:Next, day three: Concert hall and opera house design

Opera houses and concert halls have stuck to horseshoe and shoebox shapes respectively for centuries, but today's needs are dictating new shapes, says David Staples, principal of Theatre Projects Consultants.

Classical:Next, day two: A Spotify spat

A panel discussion differed over how much Spotify cannibalises other parts of the record industry, with claims that major labels received special revenue terms in exchange for buying stakes in Spotify.

Classical:Next, day two: The market in China

One session at Classical:Next provided a useful overview of the market in China, with important lessons for performers visiting the country.

Classical:Next, day one: Korea’s classical market

Tragic death of Joohoo Kim prevents him delivering keynote speech; but his text suggests a market with potential for growth made up of young and predominantly female audiences.

Classical:Next, day one: Innovation in concert presentation, reversing audience decline

A conference strand on how to reverse the decline in audiences for live music filled much of the first full day of Classical:Next.

Daniel Hope keynote at Classical:Next

The future of classical music lies not in taking it out of concert halls but bringing youth audiences into those venues, violinist and broadcaster Daniel Hope said in a wide-ranging and challenging keynote speech at the opening of the second Classical:NEXT industry forum.

Exhibitors’ 70% increase is vote of confidence in Classical:NEXT

Delegate numbers are up 20% for the second outing of Classical:NEXT, the music congress that opens in Vienna on 29 May. More remarkably, the number of exhibitors is up 70% at nearly 130, selling out the exhibition area in the MAK (Museum of Applied and Contemporary Arts).

Dobrinka Tabakova: ‘I’m an audience member too’

Composer Dobrinka Tabakova insists it is ‘serendipity’ which led to String Paths, her latest album, but others might call it overdue recognition.

Consumer sweet spot | Barry Holden, Universal’s classical catalogue director

Barry Holden’s tenure in charge of Universal’s classical catalogue has been marked by success in bending to buyers.

Audio interview: Glyndebourne’s George Bruell, head of media development

Glyndebourne's George Bruell, head of media development, talks to Phillip Sommerich about the company's efforts to widen its reach online ‒ while maintaining the values that underpin the 'Glyndebourne experience'.

Warner/Parlophone deal set to strip EMI and Virgin Classics brand names from their catalogues

Artists who have recorded for EMI and Virgin Classics could find their releases appearing under a new brand as a result of Warner Music Group’s £487m purchase of the Parlophone group of labels.

Global recording revenues rise for first time in more than a decade

The global music industry is on the road to recovery after a decade of decline, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry.

World class, global reach | Rosenblatt Recitals

In just over 12 years they have become must-attend events for opera enthusiasts in London. Now the recital series founded by a London lawyer is to gain a global audience through a new record deal, writes Phillip Sommerich

Rosenblatt Recitals go global

In just over 12 years they have become must-attend events for opera enthusiasts in London and its environs. Now the recital series founded by a London lawyer is to gain a global audience, writes Phillip Sommerich

The Rosenblatt Recitals, born from one man’s desire to hear the pick of established and rising operatic stars, are being released as recordings by Opus Arte, the Royal Opera’s record label. The first three releases feature Ailyn Pérez, Lawrence Brownlee, and Anthony Michaels-Moore in a mixture of studio sessions from Abbey Road and performances in the recitals at St John’s, Smith Square, and the Wigmore Hall. There will be five or six releases a year, with Ailish Tynan and Ekaterina Siurina the singers to be featured in the autumn...

iTunes Essentials:Classical hailed as breakthrough

The first week of iTunes' Essentials:Classical campaign has been hailed by recording companies as a dramatic success not only in converting classical collectors to downloaders but also in opening up new markets.

American English | Zuill Bailey

Does this American cellist really have something new to bring to the Elgar concerto? Zuill Bailey talks to Phillip Sommerich.

Warner/Parlophone deal: what now for EMI & Virgin Classics?

A ruling from European competition regulators has resulted in the richest archive of British classical music being sold to Warner Music Group of the US.
The £487m that Russian-born, London-resident industrialist and WMG owner Leonard Blavatnik paid for Parlophone will be a welcome addition to Universal’s coffers but the deal may not be good news for classical consumers.

Diverse diva | Barbara Hannigan

The multi-talented Canadian soprano has a busy 2013 ahead, and luckily for us, some of it will be spent in the UK.

One love | Roxanna Panufnik

Roxanna Panufnik’s latest disc collects a number of works which were borne out of a belief in religious unity, but it is also a testament to the composer's own hard graft and wheeler-dealing to get it recorded and released.

HMV failure: Hilco takeover provides some hope for classical

Corporate takeover firm Hilco has taken control of HMV by paying £40m for its debt ‒ providing some hope that at least some of its high street presence will remain. But most classical sales had already moved online.

Artistic licence | Alice Sara Ott

Alice Sara Ott’s reputation, as well as her artistic voice, is growing, as she prepares for the launch of her next disc for Deutsche Grammophon

All our own work | Own-label recording

Setting up your own record label is nothing new, but over the last decade it really seems to have taken off, with increasing numbers of artists taking the DIY approach. How are they faring?Phillip Sommerich takes soundings.

Follow the money | The Sixteen

Realising the group had plenty of returns on investment which it could offer ‒ from free tickets to a 5-10% return on large investments ‒ The Sixteen turned to its well-off fans for funding, in a scheme involving postgraduate MBA students at Cambridge's Judge Business School.

Classical labels upbeat in face of CD market’s steep decline

Classical independent labels are upbeat about prospects for 2013, in contrast to two reports that digital downloads are not gaining ground fast enough to offset the decline in CD sales.

Midem moves to boost classical offering

Celebrity guests, cut-price deals and a networking lounge have been drafted in by organisers of Midem, the Cannes-based music industry trade fair, to stem an outflow of classical delegates.

Light Fantastic | Ensemble Vox Luminis

Little known on these shores before their triumphant Gramophone award-winning first recording, French early music group Vox Luminis’ next disc is based on the funeral of an English queen.

Christmas Present | Cadenza at Christmas

Contemporary carols are a welcome surprise in the festive release from Edinburgh choir Cadenza. Why not sink it to the bottom of a loved one’s stocking in a few weeks’ time?

Nostalgic treat

One year on from the launch of what co-founder michaël adda calls ‘a crazy adventure’, France-based label La Dolce Volta is doing well.

Baroque royalty | Joyce DiDonato

Already famed for her stamina in the long haul of opera, with or without a broken leg, Joyce DiDonato opts for versatility in Drama Queens, her latest album on Virgin Classics.

Little mix | Tasmin Little

Tasmin Little tops an illustrious year on 25 November with a trip to Buckingham Palace to receive an OBE from a royal personage. There have been other highlights for the Naked Violinist: tours of China, the US and Australia as well as major European concert halls.

Vinyl satisfaction

It could be the Christmas gift for the music lover who has everything: a recording of the Bach cello suites for £900. The performance in 1954 was by Johanna Martzy – little-known today – the recording is in mono, and on vinyl disc.

Lawson Trio’s debut: all-contemporary

Filling a debut disc with first performances of contemporary works is a commercial gamble, but members of the Lawson Trio had no qualms about the decision for their album The Long Way Home.

In the genes

Beethoven pilgrimage

It is a well-trodden route with many familiar landmarks, but the Beethoven Journey Leif Ove Andsnes is undertaking will be slow and painstaking. The excursion began recently with the release on Sony of his recording of the first and third piano concertos with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, but it will be another year before the next instalment is released, with the culmination in 2014-15 seeing all five concertos plus the Choral fantasy released in a box-set. By then he will have performed the works at 150 concerts in 55 cities around the world (including Birmingham on 20 November and next March, and Liverpool in January).

Restoration play

Beethoven’s Pastoral symphony is one of his most popular works, but Ashley Wass is not sure that feeling will extend to his version of it, just released on Orchid Classics.

Regenerating the entartete

The Nazis damned their creativity as entartete (degenerate) Musik and one drove into exile and the other to death in Auschwitz, so Hans Gál and Hans Krása are often linked in textbooks. But it is coincidental that the Ensemble Epomeo unites their works in one recording, the string trio’s debut commercial disc, for Avie.

Question of style

The conversation with Andreas Scholl, unsurprisingly, soon turns to authenticity. But the countertenor is not talking about his usual repertoire of pre-classical music but that on The Wanderer, his latest album with pianist Tamar Halperin for Decca: Haydn, Mozart, Schubert and Brahms.

Screening rooms: Opera in the cinema

The 2012/13 season is going to be busy for many opera fans and balletomanes: performances at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, London’s Royal Opera House, La Scala, Opera and Ballet de Paris, Opera Australia and, next summer, Glyndebourne and Salzburg Festival. All at £15-£30 for an excellent seat and the knowledge they are adding almost nothing to their travel costs or carbon footprint.

Bright sparks: The Firebird Orchestra

The step between graduating from music college and getting a secure seat in an orchestra is a gap that seems to be ever widening as decreases in arts funding tightens orchestral purse strings. It is one that pianist and conductor Marc Corbett-Weaver has been aware of and has set out to rectify by setting up, in partnership with Austrian conductor Achim Holub, the London Firebird Orchestra. With its first season behind it, the fiery creation does seem to have lift-off: all four of the initial concerts were sold out and the diary for 2012-13 is already satisfyingly busy.