Over the next decade the country may be left without professionals that are competent in recording classical music, owner of the recording studio Interval Viktor Pelepchuk told KW.
In Ukraine the audience of admirers of contemporary classics is so much smaller than in Europe that there is no sense in even speaking of the commercial perspective of this segment. Hardly surprising than that since over the years of independence musical education of youth became nonexistent, especially concerning contemporary Ukrainian composers, Pelepchuk says.
Despite some indications that the cohorts of admirers of serious music in Ukraine are slowly but surely growing, they are too small to be viewed as a commercial segment.
Such recordings sell but for heavily subsidized prices. Making money on them is impossible, Pelepchuk complains. “I collaborate with the Universal Music Group, and their catalogue has a huge diversity of classical music recorded by Deutsche Grammophon. However, buying the rights for their production makes no sense in Ukraine as the price of one such discs will be somewhere between 100-200 hryvnia,” he says.
The picture with promoting classical music is no brighter: “It requires training, organizational talent and readiness to work hard for miserly rewards from behind the curtains. For this reason, there are practically no managers in the sphere of classical music in Ukraine.”
The last gleams of hope are video operas and concerts under open skies’ “A creative approach, the uniqueness of an event and the thought put into the staging can be the keys to success. Such projects would become a powerful impetus to the development of the music industry,” Pelepchuk concluded.
