| An ethernal question that tortured me, as the webmaster of Elena
Kuschnerova's web site, is whether the so-called corporate style
or grass-root style should be chosen for the presentation.
Obviously most of the big-name artists have corporate-style web sites, if any, a single-page "visit card" at the web site of a big record label with an official photo and laudations doing especially fine. It is of course tempting to try to produce an impression that an artist in question belongs to the big-name group via a professionally designed, expensive-looking, corporate-style web site. This would admittedly appeal to Artistic Directors and other important professionals and it could be helpful in finding concert opportunities for the artist. This is the reason why so many of small- or no-name artists have such web sites, with a bio consisting of a long list of their appearances at all possible venues of the world and of their collaborations with all possible useful-name colleagues. Each of these artists is declared to be "one of the foremost talents of their generation". In reality, however, at the moment Artistic Directors cannot be reached directly via the Internet. Most of them, formed during less competitive times, are now overwhelmed by a hudge number of artists on the market, and they just engage those whom they know since twenty years. They are only considering suggestions from their immediate environment or they are only getting interested in heavily promoted new "supertalents". How one can explain the fact that the German Record Critics' Award for the Prokofiev CD in 1998, Harold Schonberg's highest praise for the Scriabin CD in 2000, as well as the recent rosette in the Penguin Guide 2003/04 for the Bach CD have not directly materialized into any offers to Elena from Artistic Directors of innumerable Festivals and Concert Halls? Simply one is not looking for new great artists and is not studying the market. Of course, well meaning people would say, she has to get a good agent! It is easy to say but, in fact, agents are overwhelmed by miriads of artists, too, and most of them are now having a hard time to sell their less-then-well-known artists (this is the absolute majority!) to defensively-minded Artistic Directors. On the other hand, not the first-class but signed up and long time in the business artists are presumably doing better than new artists. One got used to the presence of the former, whereas the latter just cause the "enough!" reaction with those who are overwhelmed. We are living in a time of a highly manipulative concert business, and there is a minimal amount of investments into the building a career for a new artist that is needed to get it working. This minimal amout of investments should be pretty high, and only most powerful benefactors can afford it. Smaller investments are just thrown away money. Agents know it and usually they won't sign up new artists, unless they are very young and competition winners. It would be thus plainly pathetic to think that any corporate-style web site could compete in its efficiency with connections- and money-based industrial type of promotion and that it would bring something material to the artist. On the other hand, in the case of Elena Kuschnerova using the corporate style would be a kind of cheating. In spite of a creditable musical genealogy and critical acclaim, this artist has nothing to do with the musical establishment, she is not directly associated with any of big names, she was not managed and she has not harvested money awards and honorable fellowships. Listening to a multitude of pianists on the international concert network has lead me to a conclusion that Elena has a "higher then the world class" level, so to say. She is a great artist with unique spiritual qualities, and she does not need to assosiate herself with bigger-name artists to get more recognition. In her case, letting the music speak for itself in the Internet is much more persuading than any of the best of the generation or coached with NN claims. The outcome of all this reasoning is that it makes more sense to run this web site in the "grass-root style", that is, to speak directly with classical-music listeners. The core of this style are numerous and free audio and video downloads. This strategy proved to be efficient during the time since the foundation of this web site in 1999. Elena got known to many people in different parts of the globe, the sales of her CDs were boosted, and she recieved a lot of new concert opportunities in different countries. (Note that practically all these concerts were organized without concert agencies, although we have nothing against the latter and we invite them to collaborate.) Quite recently teaching abilities of Elena have been recognized, too, and she started to recieve invitations to give master classes. (Of course, only a part of these achievements can be ascribed to this web site. The perseverance of Elena, who moved to Germany in the unfavorable beginning of 90th and started her career anew with zero connections, in spite of many warnings, as well as the devotion of her local friends and support of German record labels and radio stations SWR and BR were other important factors.) I believe that all artists who are really good but do not enjoy a heavy promotion should follow our steps. Their web sites will recieve a big traffic via search engines and from the directory of free classical music "Classic Cat" that will list their free tracks, in a well classified way. In fact, a few good pianists could well cover most of the mainstream piano repertoire and thus build a record library of a significance that cannot be overrated. Imagine that people in developing countries or just kids who do not have an access to CDs for financial or other reasons can listen to most of the music pieces in the Internet for free! For many people online listening is their first encounter with the classical music. I think that it is even a greater achievement for an artist to initiate somebody previously unexposed to classical music than to please an expert. Remember that the first impression is usually the strongest one, and so new artists can build a huge base of new and devoted listeners. With time, these listeners will mature and find themselves in a position to buy music of their favorite artists (remember that most of artists are not wealthy and they need money for their life, in contrast to "superstars" that need money to buy one more villa!). With the advent of new money-transfer technologies such as PayPal and affordable software for selling downloads, it is becoming possible to sell music directly from artist to listener at mutually acceptable shareware prices. This can greatly influence the situation on the classical-record market in the near future. To see how it can be technically realized, please, visit Elena's downloads shop. Tagged high-resolution MP4 and WMA files offered there are practically indistinguishable from the source recordings, and they are commercial products having such advantages over CDs as lower price, worldwide availability, compact storage, and the ease of building a library and of the mobile use. Apart of that, there is the possibility for artists to recieve additional concert opportunities via their web sites. A new fascinating thing is studying the demand of concert goers for a particlar artist with the help of Internet polls and to coordinating concert organizing depending on the results. I have set up an appropriate poll for Elena Kuschnerova and I would like to invite all interested in attending Elena's recitals to vote for their cities. Of course, a dozen of votes for a city is too little to make any influence but I am looking optimistically into the future.. This article does not reflect the opinions of Elena Kuschnerova. It is solely due to Dmitry
Garanin, Editor & Webmaster at http://elenakuschnerova.com
P. S.: Please do not ask Elena or me to praise your favorite pianists. Most of them already recieved enough credits. It would be much more useful if you ask your favorite pianists to give credits to Elena Kuschnerova. |