The mysterious Apple Music nerds saving classical music from extinction

Telegraph

2 days ago

Few things are more depressing for classical music lovers than the classical recording charts. Your eye roams despairingly down the endless lists of crossover and ambient pap, looking for something real and substantial. The problem is the deathly hand of the algorithm used to mould customer's choices via those ubiquitous playlists, which is squeezing all the joyous variety out of the art form.
For grim evidence of that, take a look at the current 'official' list of top 10 classical recordings, which is based on purchases of physical albums and downloads in the UK. Albums by Ludovico Einaudi occupy no less than six of the top 10 slots, mingled with Max Richter's appropriately soporific Sleep, organist Anna Lapwood 's lightweight 'filmic' Firedove, and a compilation of utterly predictably classical hits from the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
The 'hits' generated by this chart will be recycled into yet more classical playlists, which in turn will squeeze the art form further. Among streaming platforms Spotify is especially culpable, for making classical music impossible to search properly and bombarding us with dull playlists. It's death by slow asphyxiation.
So imagine my surprise when, in a moment of idle curiosity, I peeked at Apple Music Classical's latest edition of its top 100 chart. The chart is scrupulously compiled every week from Apple, iTunes and Shazam data sources measured in more than 160 countries.
Among the top 10 there are two albums by that deeply serious and still fairly obscure mid-Baroque German composer and virtuoso violinist Heinrich Biber. There are also two albums of music by Erik Satie, including one of unknown pieces recently unearthed in French archives, and at number two, some delightful theatre music by little-known Italian Baroque composer Pietro Locatelli.
What's going on? Is there a sinister cabal of classical music nerds who hacked Apple's servers and substituted Biber and Locatelli for Einaudi? Not exactly.
There is certainly a bunch of classical nerds busily subverting the market, but they have the title 'editor' and do it with Apple's blessing. They don't fix those charts, but they certainly have a big influence on them by offering their recommendations of new and old recordings on the top row of Apple Music Classical's homepage, the so-called 'Heroes Shelf'. The overlap between the top 100 and the Heroes Shelf isn't absolute, but it's certainly noticeable.
Look further down the page and you'll find more evidence of their guiding hands. There's clearly a guitar enthusiast or two among them, and the playlists are more interesting than any algorithm could come up with. For instance, the Art-Song playlist includes some Italian song, which is normally overlooked.
Of course, the contrast isn't absolute. Not even the mighty Apple can ignore the market entirely, and Einaudi and Max Richter are among their best-sellers. Nonetheless the difference made by employing a bunch of classical music lovers as editors, guiding customers' tastes, has been profound.
All this has happened with remarkably little fanfare, and yet to me it seems one of the most significant transformations in classical music taste-forming in the entire history of the art form. Go back to Renaissance and Baroque times and it was elites – emperors, dukes, cardinals – who decided what art-music would be performed, though musicians themselves played a significant role by enforcing standards of craftsmanship.
Later, as a mass market for cultural goods arose, new sorts of taste-maker came into being: publishers, managers and above all impresarios. Henry Wood, co-founder of the Proms, was completely upfront about his desire to 'raise the level of public taste'. These impresarios had outsize personalities, but latterly the taste-formers such as the Controller of BBC Radio 3 have been more discreet, and their hand on the tiller correspondingly lighter.
But the remarkable thing about the taste-formers at Apple Music Classical is that they are entirely anonymous. I tried my hardest to winkle some names out of the company, but they wouldn't even put a number on them. Some may regard this as sinister; I actually find it quite touching, because the condition of anonymity grants them total freedom. When taste is led ostentatiously from the front, fashion and social distinction affects people's judgement. By contrast, the nerds (sorry, editors) at Apple Music Classical constitute a pure Republic of Classical Music. Unaffected by prestige, they are free to recommend what they love just because they love it.
It should be said Apple isn't the only classical streaming platform which aims to guide listeners. Idagio offers artists' interviews, an 'editors' weekly pick' and intelligently curated playlists. Presto Music offers in-depth articles and guides listeners through new releases. But Apple Music's reach is bound to make it especially influential, and its 'top 100' list shows is already having a transforming effect on listeners' tastes.
Not all the changes are necessarily good; for instance the great names among classical performers are notable by their absence in the top 100, apart from Glenn Gould and Rubinstein. Younger performers are more prominent, particularly Asian ones, but not only Asian. That excellent early music group from the West Country Brecon Baroque has received a massive boost on the international stage, thanks to its appearance on the Heroes Shelf and in the top 10.
Joseph Haydn's stock is down, Heinrich Biber's is noticeably up, and in general the canonical 'great composers' no longer have pride of place. But all taste-formers have their blind spots and preferences. Better a bunch of human enthusiasts than the stultifying sameness induced by those algorithms, which really are the death-knell of the art-form.