Concerts
The impact of recordings on the concert hall has also been enormous,both for classical and for popular performances.Performers today can hardly hope to attract a concert audience if they have not produced distinguished recordings; usually,their audiences,both at home and abroad,consist of persons who know the performers' work through recordings.In the popular music field especially,many performers cannot compete in live appearances with recordings in which they depend heavily on technical aid.There are some who feel that the phonograph may cause the demise of live performance in the concert hall,which,if it survives at all,will do so for social rather than musical reasons.A possible indication of this trend is the disappearance of independent,nonacademic,nonprofessional classical music magazines in America; instead,there are record magazines.Their name changes are significant:The American Record Guide,established in 1935 as The American Music Lover; High Fidelity,established in 1951; and Stereo Review,established in 1958 as Hi Fi/Music Review.The record magazine is not a peculiarly American phenomenon; England has The Gramophone and Records and Recording; France,Diapason and Harmonie; Germany,HiFi Stereophonie and Fono Forum; Italy,Discoteca Hi Fi; Holland,Luister; Belgium,Hi-Fi Musique; Sweden,Musikrevy; and Japan,Record Art/Record Geijutsu,among many other periodical publications.
