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Please note that the views expressed are those of the correspondents - no actual or implied endorsement may be inferred on behalf of the BBC, of Radio 3, or of Norman Lebrecht.

Eric Van Tassel, Cambridgeshire
The only 'new idea' with legs is old music in new performances.

Klemperer's Brahms 3 or the Toscanini/Vinay 'Otello' will always be worth hearing again, but people do want to hear something fresh and unfamiliar. The last *composer* whose new works were eagerly awaited by anyone beyond a handful of anoraks was Richard Strauss, who died 55 years ago.

What's left? Novel old music. Independent labels from Hyperion and Harmonia Mundi to CPO and Glossa are able to find new music by new composers who died two or three hundred years ago, as well as unfamiliar music by a few 'familiar' masters like Schubert and Liszt.

So far, so good. There's plenty of Renaissance and Baroque music that is new to us *and* (unlike Birtwistle et al.) also manages to be genuinely enjoyable.

For those who believe the marketing hype, 'early music' today means Bach cantatas or Mozart operas, in what the record labels call 'authentic' performances. But despite appearances, the early music movement has hardly begun. The novelty value of old instruments is comparatively trivial: a genuine early music movement, when it happens, will rediscover historically consistent ways of *using* old instruments. And it will begin to revive the most important and least understood 'period' instrument of all -- the period voice.

David Harbin, Nottingham, UK
Does it matter that the major companies are pulling back on their classical recordings when so many enterprising independent labels are producing fascinating recordings? 

In this month only we have Herreweghe's period instrument Bruckner 7 from Harmonia Mundi, Simpson's 7th symphony on Hyperion and a new Falstaff on LSO Live. 

The vacuum left by the majors is being admirably filled.

Simon Bell
If there is a vacuum within the classical music industry - and from what I heard last week on R3 when a senior executive of a major record company was interviewed re. the current massive release programme of stored "back" numbers", it can only be a partial vacuum - then surely it will be filled primarily with those works which fall into two categories.

The first is the kind of music that a reasonable number of people will want to hear - either at concerts or via CDs and other media. This will no doubt be, in the main, new recordings/performances of old favourites by, sometimes, new performers or conductors.

The second is the much smaller market of new compositions - which may or may not bear much resemblance to what most people would define as "music" - for those who enjoy contemporary styles and which will be paid for largely by "public" money in the form of grants or commissions by bodies such as the BBC and by private sponsorship.

In the first case, the power remains in my view primarily with the listening public: if they are deemed unlikely to buy the music in quantities which will provide a commercial return it probably won't be issued. In the second case, as now, it remains with the relatively small group of music "insiders" who can influence funding decisions.

I don't personally think much will change - and I don't believe that the future of classical music is as grey as some might paint it! All we need is one, great, truly classical composer of real genius - a sort of antithesis of Harrison Birtwistle - who can reach the level of respect that, for example, Haydn had by the time he was, say, 50, and the classical candle will burn as brightly - and the money will flow as fast - as ever. I'm sure that that composer is out there, somewhere, waiting in the wings!

Geoffrey Gibbs,  Emeritus Prof. of Music, University of Rhode Island
..of course in America, classical music institutions depend on private giving. What the state and federal government offer is seed-money, usually requiring matching funds. Now corporations are being told by financial consultants that fine arts are a bad risk. Corporations and foundations get more publicity for their money if they steer away from the arts.  And this attitude affects individual donor too.

So what must be done? Americans and I suppose British as well must understand that the overall priorities of nations have impact on every aspect of life including classical music.

David Ward (composer), Aberdeenshire
I certainly hope the BBC survives as a major contributor to the dissemination of classical music, not only broadcast and on-line, but also as a patron of live performance. In 1992 the BBC actually took a large orchestra (the SSO) and two singers all the way to Lerwick, Shetland to perform an hour long piece of mine about a Shetland fishing disaster. The audience was large and enthusiastic; but the cost was enormous. This was largely paid by a mixture of the BBC and the EU, with some significant contributions from local bodies. I hope the BBC will be able to continue to support the idea of major live musical performances in out-of-the-way places, and that these will reach the largest possible world-wide audience through the internet.

On money: yes, there's bound to be new money, but we'll equally inevitably lose some old funding: there never will be enough, and there never has been in the history of the arts!

David Heath (composer)
The people with the power in the long run are the public who vote all art, over time, either great or not [by buying CD's going to concerts etc etc]---so the question in contemporary art is why has that all important link between the public and the artist  been lost? Certainly it has in contemporary music where unlistenable pretentious music has been the order of the BBC/Arts councils day for the last 50 years!
 
The answer is that now that the arts council/BBC give out the money, they have by default also become the audience so now most composers write for the benefit of, or with one eye on, who is in power at the  BBC/AC rather than for the public, which was always the case before. To write with the audience in mind is therefore branded 'populist or crossover' both buzz words used by the establishment to cheapen someone's work----I mean Mozart was populist and Brahms was crossover!

All of this has led, in my opinion, to the worst most irrelevant art ever produced in the history of western civilization and is what has turned off audiences to new music.

Herbert Lomas
If Covent Garden, the Coliseum and all other artistic institutions who receive taxpayers' money had to display their productions on BBC2 in return, as in Sweden, this would create stars, new audiences, and in a generation transform the artistic scene.

Brian Gardiner, West Glamorgan
The price of all classical CDs should be dropped to £4.99.  Many more people would be prepared to experiment with their listening rather than having to take a chance on a £15 CD.

Iain Ellis, Shropshire
Classical music is presented too professionally sometimes.  All the experts with music degrees don't represent the average person and can come across as "know-it-alls".  He enjoys the Radio 3 presenters but would like to see classical music presented by an average member of the public.
 
Donald Knox-Richards, Liverpool
Gerard Schwartz the Musical Director of the RLPO is being ousted by the musicians because they find his planning of programmes is boring. Ok fine, but why can then decision not be taken by the subscribers of the concerts, as they after all, finance the concerts that the musicians ultimately perform.

S. Cornell Sebastian (Lecturer, Composer), London
There is a great deal of very interesting new music being written in this country. Unfortunately, the handful of widely publicised composers (between the ages of 25-45)  are not the ones writing it.

As someone who has been for the past 25 years an active member of the new music community, I can assert with total conviction that, whatever the publicists, agents, managers for the 2-3 active publishers in this country say about their 'new Benjamin Brittens', they are NOT considered by the rest of us as ARTISTS OR ORIGINAL COMPOSERS. They are just a group of boys and girls coming from similar cultural backgrounds with a firm determination to make a career.

Having known many of them -and in some cases their parents, agents, etc. - I am convinced that the disease of 'sterile' contemporary composition is to do with the 'ivory towers created by some publishers...

It is the journalists/critics of today who are failing to criticise (or afraid to criticise, as it is so much easier to be supporting a new Britten than apply some real criticism!) the handful of 'silver spoon' composers who receive the most out-of-proportion attention (and subsidy/cash; opera commissions, repeat performances, etc.) at the expense of thousands of the others....

Yehuda Shapiro
The consumer can have as much power as he or she chooses - or can be bothered - to have. Some consumers of classical music (or so-called classical music) will be ready to swallow whatever crossover pap is shoved down their throats. Other consumers will exercise their intellect and their critical discretion - as well, one hopes, as their taste and emotions - and search out the music and artists that float their particular boat.
 
The power remains with the individual.