Remy Franck
(c) Bjoern Woll / ICMA
During their Chamber Music festival Spaces of music, from September 17-20 in Gniezno and Poznan, Poland, the Zygmunt Noskowski Foundation organizes the International Conference ‘Polish music – creation, reception, promotion’. The conference comprises workshops for students and graduates in the field of musicology, music theory, culture studies and journalism. Remy Franck, Editor in chief of Pizzicato and President of the International Classical Music Awards, has been invited to hold a lecture and to appear as one of the workshops leaders.
Remy Franck’s lecture runs under the titel: In an atomised world, promotion plays an essential role for musical success. Here is an abstract: « Classical music has never been so alive and so rich as today. There have never been so many concerts all around the world, there never were as many festivals being organized, and the number of audio and video recordings has never been so large. This unbelievable diversity is splitting up audiences between probably too many releases and too many events, which often leads to the wrong conclusion that classical music is dying.
At the same time, concurrence has become a major characteristic of the worldwide music market. Success is no longer depending only on quality, but also and maybe first of all on marketing. The work of PR people may have dramatic consequences, especially when it reaches journalists of the generalist press who do not necessarily have the knowledge to separate the wheat from the chaff. As a consequence, the music world suffers from both, non-expert music journalism and a focus on a limited number of PR-made ‘stars’. Far too often however, the best known musicians are not the best ones, they just happen do have the best PR officers.
On the other hand, musicians deserving a much bigger popularity are legion. Quality being no longer the key element for the international success, many countries have to improve their presence on the market. Poland makes no exception. From a foreign perspective, the incredibly rich Polish music life must be generally considered as undervalued. »
Other lecturers are Irena Poniatowska, Julia Gołębiowska, Małgorzata Komorowska, Joanna Kozłowska, Jagna Sokorska, Eugenia Rozlach, Maja Baczyńska, Krystyna Juszyńska, Laurence Vittes, Krystyna Juszyńska, Andrzej Kosowski, Aneta Derkowska and Ewa Schreiber.
