Deezer, a music streaming and sharing service, is finally set up in Canada, and includes full integration with Facebook. There are thousands of classical albums available for listening there — but it takes a lot of digging to find stuff to listen to.
There is no classical music channel listen among the initial selection one finds on the first visit. But it wasn’t hard to find a Vivaldi channel, featuring The Four Seasons, of course. There was also a bit of Boccherini and Pachelbel vying for the easy-listening crowd.
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
The Toronto Symphony is represented by a Beethoven album made with music director Sir Ernest MacMillan and soloist Glenn Gould. Former music director Jukka-Pekka Saraste is represented, as is the great Messiah recording with Kathleen Battle done during Sir Andrew Davis’s tenure.
But the jumble of search results also includes work by the City of Birmingham Symphony, for some reason.
There’s plenty of Glenn Gould. You can find Maureen Forrester’s great recordings with conductors Bruno Walter and Sir Thomas Beecham. Lois Marshall is there, too.
The big current names show up for roll call — Tafelmusik is well represented, as are expats Gerald Finley, James Ehnes and Marc-André Hamelin. I was thrilled to find to find the Gryphon Trio there.
This means the Canadian legends are safe and sound in the world of online sharing. But what about everyone else?
Late composer Ann Southam is represented, by Soundings for a New Piano.
But Jane Archibald, the hotshot soprano about to hit the COC stage in Handel’s Semele, is absent. Pianist David Jalbert, bearing a sparkling new recording of the Goldberg Variations, does not show up.
We have to imagine that the legions of Canadians who sign up to use Deezer in the coming days and months are going to help populate the site with missing artists and composers. There are enough dedicated enthusiasts to make sure that this happens.
But what about the Deezer sign-up who is a casual browser, who might be interested in sampling a bit of classical music, but doesn’t know who or what to search for?
Friends’ recommendations work nicely with the biggest/most popular names, but this form of crowd curation doesn’t serve everyone else — what a former U.S. Secretary of Defense might have labelled the known unknowns, which, to the novice, are unknown unknowns.
And what about context and background to all this music?
Radio used to be able to make the unknowns known, and put them in context. But what now for Canadian music?
Would an Internet radio station for Canadian-made classical music — providing curation, context as well as the music itself — be a solution? Or am I being too old-fashioned in my thinking?
In case you need to know more, here’s the original Deezer promo video:
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
