We've seen a vinyl resurgence in pop and jazz music coming for many years... but for some reason, this hasn't translated into the classical music market? Why is that – and why do classical musicians and labels need to jump on the LP bangwagon?
‘Fly me to the Moon’, Frank Sinatra’s 1964 hit, lived up to its name. Half a century ago, in July 1969, it was the first music heard on the Moon when it was played – on cassette – by Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin as he stepped onto its surface. Eight years later, NASA’s exploratory Voyager spacecraft entrusted its 54-minute cross-section of Earth’s music to a record, etched with instructions on how to play it – including a handy stylus. The scientist behind the project, Carl Sagan, was optimistic that the spacecraft would not only be ‘encountered’ but that the record itself ‘will be played… if there are advanced space-faring civilizations in interstellar space’.
Who’d have guessed that 50 years later, we ourselves would still be playing these records (as well as cassettes, inexplicably making a comeback too).
The resurgence of vinyl
Over the past 15 years record sales have skyrocketed. According to the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), over five million vinyl LPs were bought in the UK last year – that’s eight per cent more than in 2020 and the 14th consecutive year of growth.
A booming hi-fi market
As for the hi-fi market, ‘there’s never really been a revival for us; we’ve always sold turntables since 1967, and we’re selling a lot more now than we did ten years ago,’ says Tony Revelle, chief operating officer of the leading specialist retailer Audio-T. ‘We now sell more turntables than CD players, streamers and DACS combined, and sales of one of the most popular turntable brands – Rega – have increased ten-fold.’
The servicing and upgrading of older decks is also serious business, though the people bringing them in have changed, as children inherit their parents’ cherished equipment and want to get it going again. Not that turntables have remained static. ‘They’re better now than they ever were,’ claims Revelle. ‘They sound more digital in terms of detail and fidelity but they still have that indefinable quality which enables you to get engaged in the music in a way that pure digital often doesn’t. Of course, digital sound can draw you in, but in order to match what vinyl does (even with just a £300 turntable) you’ll have to spend much more money.’
The aesthetic appeal of vinyl
But is this all just nostalgia? ‘There were some amazing stats going round two or three years ago about how few vinyl records were actually taken out of their shrink wrap,’ says Steve Long of Signum Records. In 2016 the BBC published research showing that half the people surveyed weren’t primarily interested in playing the records they’d just bought: many of them didn’t even own a turntable. ‘Vinyls’, as they’re referred to today, are a style statement: their arty covers perfect for casually propping up in the background of an Instagram post or popping into a slick ‘vinyl frame’ for mounting on the wall.
Why isn't the vinyl trend crossing over to the classical music market?
‘Although sales of vinyl overall are amazing,’ confirms Long, ‘we’ve been underwhelmed with the figures for classical music, which only amount to about two per cent of the UK classical market [compared with 34 per cent for CDs and 55 per cent for streaming]. When we reissued the Gabrieli Consort’s award-winning Venetian Coronation on two LPs in 2013, we were working with very small numbers: we pressed 1000 copies and needed to sell 500 to break even, which we’ve done, but it hasn’t put a gold disc on the wall.’
Low volumes and high production costs make classical LPs a niche product, and recent manufacturing delays are not helping the rollout. Caused by a combination of Covid, labour shortages and a scarcity of PVC, demand for vinyl is currently running at about double what the factories can produce. Small classical labels, like Onyx, find it difficult to meet release dates, especially when popular artists like Adele are hoovering up capacity with vast orders – such as 500,000 copies of the album 30.
Vinyl: what's the appeal?
For true vinylistas it’s worth the wait. For some, playing records is a positively sensual experience: sliding the black, slinky PVC out of its tight-fitting dust jacket onto a revolving, padded bed, guiding the stylus into the opening groove and savouring the gentle crackle and purr. For German cellist Leonard Elschenbroich the LP is life-enhancing. ‘The only time I listen to music for pleasure is on vinyl,’ he reckons. ‘I hadn’t really listened to music for a long time, and then ten years ago I was asked to make a vinyl album and I really got into it. Since discovering vinyl, the joy has returned to my lifestyle: I’m home and I sit down and look through my collection, which is still quite humble (but growing!); I choose a record and relax – I’ve got 25 minutes until I have to get up and change the side. Lots of people have this kind of experience – connecting the ritual of putting on a vinyl with unplugging and taking time out.’
Rising vinyl sales have not been matched by a surge in new recordings. Reissued classics are, of course, very welcome, especially gems such as Simon Rattle’s 2014-15 Sibelius symphony cycle with the Berlin Philharmonic (seven clear vinyl pressings at a mere £200). But it’s a big event when a new recording is made specifically for release on vinyl. ‘For once it’s the LP which is the focal point rather than a nice add-on to a CD release,’ says Matthew Cosgrove, general manager of Onyx Classics. ‘And Elschenbroich and pianist Alexei Grynyuk thought the intimacy and intensity of Brahms’s two cello sonatas, alongside arrangements of his Four Serious Songs were the ideal repertory.’ Whereas most vinyl releases today are digitally recorded and edited, every element of this new record is analogue, something rarely attempted since the heyday of the LP half a century ago.
Why classical musicians should embrace analogue sound
It’s often assumed today that increasing the amount of information available – like adding extra pixels to a photo – will actually make the result more realistic. But Elschenbroich isn’t so sure. ‘An ultra-high-definition photo can look hyper-real, unlike the way we actually see with the naked eye. To me, pictures taken on Kodachrome film from the mid-70s seem more natural. The same with analogue sound: our instruments make sound waves in the air, the microphone picks them up, the wave form is recorded on tape – it’s not changed into 0s and 1s like a digital recording. Nothing is lost in translation.’
The heavy responsibility of turning back the clock, but not getting stuck in the past, fell to producer Simon Kiln. ‘In preparation, we spent a lot of time listening to old recordings to get a sense of the pre-digital soundworld, but it was important to find what would actually sound best for Leonard and Alexei, and that meant trying out old and new microphones and experimenting with where to place them and how to arrange the studio.’ The recording took place at Abbey Road in September last year with a specially assembled team who knew all about recording onto large spools of reel-to-reel tape and editing it with a razor blade – literally. There was no safety net, no back-up digital recording, and the pressure was on the performers to record long, accurate takes – usually whole movements – not only to conserve the tape (an eye-watering £300 an hour) but also to avoid the razor wherever possible.
‘The thing about razor-blade editing,’ says Kiln, ‘is that it’s completely destructive: once you’ve cut an edit into the master tape there’s no going back. Because Leonard knew there were limits to where you can edit like this there was certainly heightened adrenaline in the studio.’ This was something Elschenbroich relished: ‘For me, one of the reasons for going analogue is that we can’t record it bit by bit, like today’s digital recordings – we can’t fix every little thing. We have to record long sections. We did just three takes of the opening movement of the First Brahms Sonata and between them we knew we could make maybe four or five cuts. So, it felt very close to playing live.’
This LP will offer music lovers and audiophiles something new and fresh – not the retro-experience one might expect. Long takes and minimal editing offer greater freedom and continuity, and convey more sense of a real performance. Listening to traditional digital recordings, Elschenbroich often feels as though he’s sitting in an empty concert hall, ‘but with this recording – and I’ve listened to it in many different places with headphones and speakers and so on – wherever you play it is where it’s taking place. So, if you’re in a small living room, then Alexei and I are sitting there with you; if it’s a big reception room, then we’re playing for you at the front. There is no space that you enter: it enters into the space that you are in.’ What Simon Kiln and the team have created at Abbey Road is, says Elschenbroich, ‘the best cello-piano sound I know: it’s the closest to how I would like to be heard – always! It will be difficult to record any other way from now on.’
As classical music lovers we may not be the ones who will benefit most from the current vinyl revival. Yet some of us still have our old collections, and there are boxes of second-hand LPs just waiting to be snapped up in charity shops and auction houses across the country. And if this analogue awakening does nothing else, it should inspire us to stop for half-an-hour, and make more time for relaxed, mindful listening.