When I was first encountering recorded classical music in the 1980's (mainly on cassette tape!), Haitink and von Karajan were the default conductors, their names were on practically anything. Both enjoyed long and exceedingly prolific careers, and indeed made it a point to record just about everything of note in the standard repertoire, often multiple times. Recently, I was shocked to discover that he was still actively conducting at age 90, his skills very much intact.
Just yesterday I was listening to Haitink's recording of Shostakovich's 15th Symphony, coupled with the song cycle "From Jewish Folk Poetry". In this instance, the "B-side" outshines the main event, Haitink had a sympathetic ear for Jewish themes, his acclaimed recording of Shostakovich's 13th Symphony providing another example. Haitink reportedly claimed he got his breaks in the music industry only because of better talents being lost to the Holocaust. That's a debt that can never be repaid, but I'd like to think that he had a mission to fulfill by recording historically fascinating compositions such as these. "From Jewish Folk Poetry" is equal parts solemn lament and joyous celebration of life, Haitink was equally adept at conducting both styles.
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Dave Hurwitz's latest rant, titled "How the industry made classical music worthless", goes to show that the music industry's follies transcend genres and span multiple generations of fans. I agree that classical record companies made a ludicrous mistake by abandoning the prospects of mass marketing in the early 1950's, when every other major genre realized there were mountains of money to be made by selling records. I wouldn't say that the music is worthless these days, but the reasons for the CD's decline is no different for classical music than for the other genres I've been writing about all these years. Fans feel swindled by the record companies for paying inflated CD prices from the inception of the medium through the early 2000's. Once CD burning technologies became installed in nearly every computer, and fans realized that their formerly exalted discs cost pennies to produce (but were routinely sold for upwards of $15-20), an entire generation of paying music fans were lost forever to filesharing and later streaming services.
As noted by Hurwitz, multiple repackagings have exhausted even the most hardcore fans and diluted the market with inferior products -- this is certainly true for pop and rock as well. Essentially the entire middle of the market has been hollowed out, leaving only the most dedicated fans willing to shell out money for special conversation pieces (180 gram vinyl re-releases with expanded artwork, Record Store Day exclusives, etc) and those who are happy to dabble in paid or free streaming services and have no use for a physical product.
One could argue that Haitink and Karajan contributed to this by oversaturating the market and ruining things for future generations, but I personally would not (and not just out of respect for Haitink's recent passing). Karajan supposedly sold hundreds of millions of records and is still a notable name more than thirty years after his death, he was unquestionably doing something right.
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