There has been a new trend on the music market for the last couple of years, which tries to create a new audience for classical music. In times, in which there are less people in the concert halls, more and more record labels and musicians are trying to present classical music in a more "trendy" way, by re-arranging the works of the last centuries. Ensembles like "Rondo Veneziano", which is playing arrangements mostly originally composed by W.A. Mozart and "André Rieu", whose ensemble is doing mostly arrangements of waltzes of the Strauss-Dynasty from Vienna have a tremendous success with their performances and all their records are bestsellers.
So is this a good trend to find a new audience for classical music?
In my opinion it's always good, when people, who never came in contact with classical music in their life before, find their way to this musical genre. But the sad thing is, that this has no or only a little effect on the situation of the "real" classical music scene, because the listeners get stuck in this state of their musical taste. They probably think, that Mozart's music is originally composed with an E- Bass and drums and don't care about the original work. It's enough for them to see the musicians of "Rondo Veneziano", wearing rococo perukes and rococo costumes to have the illusion of a "classical concert". And it's the same with the Orchestra of "André Rieu", which tries to create the illusion of a concert of the art nouveau epoch. It's only the hokey cliché of the original composition but easy consumable utility music,the best music to listen to during the hen party...! I think, sooner or later, this will kill music as an art, if people are only taking it as background music.
But on the other hand, we have to keep in mind, that also in the era of Rococo and Romantic, music mostly was entertainment for the upper class and not seldom, the composers were forced to create music just for the fun of these ignorants, because of the money! There's a true story of Beethoven: He was invited to play some of his compositions during an aristocratic jollification, so he was sitting at the piano and while he played his music, the people were just playing cards and were chattering all the time. So after some time Beethoven slammed down the cover of the keyboard, ran to the door and while leaving he shouted: "I'm not playing any longer for these ignorant pigs!!" So things haven't changed so much during the centuries...
But there are also good examples in contemporary music: There are a lot of Jazz musicians, who re-arrange classical music. It all started with Jacques Loussier's "Play Bach"-records in the sixties and a lot of Jazz musicians followed to "play" with classical compositions, i.e. the "Eugen Cicero Trio" in Germany and the "Gordon Goodwin's Big Phat Band " in the U.S.A. They are not only adding a modern beat to the original, but create something totally new with their arrangements.
If this will encourage a lot of listeners to listen to the original work as well, it would be the best thing. The original always is a better thing, than the cheap pseudo-modernisation of the masterworks of the last centuries!
