CHINA: THE FUTURE OF CLASSICAL MUSIC?

“I honestly think that in some real sense the future of classical music depends on developments in China in the next 20 years,” said Robert Sirota, the president of the Manhattan School of Music. “They represent a vast new audience as well as a classical-music-performing population that is much larger than anything we’ve had so far. You’re looking at a time when, maybe 20 to 40 years from now, Shanghai and Beijing are really going to be considered centers of world art music.”
Cultural generalizations are always perilous. But many Western musicians and educators interviewed cited similar qualities in Chinese virtuosos: passion and refinement, expressiveness and brilliance. Chinese players seem less bound by the culture of conformity sometimes found in Asia, those Westerners said.