A Classical Grammy: It Looks Good on the Resume, But . . .

Winning a Grammy award can mean selling more records--lots more records if you’re Bonnie Raitt or Billy Joel. But all it usually means to most classical winners is another credit on the resume.

One exception could be the Emerson String Quartet’s set of Bela Bartok’s six quartets, which the local Wherehouse chain reported selling 2 1/2 times as many copies last week as compared to the week before, when the recording was awarded a best album Grammy.

“There was also some action on Leonard Bernstein’s Mahler Third and a little bit more than usual for the PDQ Bach album. Otherwise, everything was normal,” said Rubin Meisel, the Wherehouse’s classical buyer.

Glenn Rich, a clerk at Tower Records’ Sunset Strip store, reports the Bartok was sold out and they “got a lot of requests.” Rich also said that the Mahler Third and Dawn Upshaw’s recital on Nonesuch both continued selling well, but about the same as they had before the awards. “We’ve been going through 25 copies a month on the Upshaw,” Rich said.

On the East Coast, Robert Etherington, a classical buyer for the Harvard Cooperative Society in Cambridge, Mass., also reported that sales of the Bartok were continuing strong but showed no increase that could be traced to the award. Among other Grammy winners, only the Britten War Requiem on Telarc showed increased sales. “We sold five copies over the weekend,” he said, “after selling none the week before.”

The Emerson Quartet’s David Finkel, in an interview the morning after the ceremonies, said that the Grammy award means more than better sales: “We’re hoping that the increased recognition will, by securing higher fees, make it easier to cut down on the number of concerts we play, thereby allowing us to sustain a high artistic level and to play what we want when we want. Even though we’ve been around for 13 seasons, there’s still a lot of literature we haven’t played yet.”

Still, recording companies try to cash in on the winners. The most ubiquitous means of promotion is a round, gold-leaf sticker with “Grammy Winner” written in large black letters, supplied by the National Academy of Arts and Sciences, the organization which gives the awards. As soon as the winners were announced, recording company representatives swarmed into record stores to sticker the winners.

Industry observers said that hardcore classical consumers are more influenced by magazine and newspaper reviews than by Grammy awards. When the Emerson’s Bartok set was named record of the year by the English Gramophone magazine, stores across the nation noticed immediate increased sales.

Steve Whealton at the Serenade Record Store in Washington said: “Winning a Grammy doesn’t usually make a great deal of difference to us. In your more sophisticated classical stores, Grammys tend to be awarded to releases which are selling very well already. Sales of the Emerson, however, increased drastically when it won the Gramophone award.”

Television exposure may be the key to realizing dramatic sales increases from winning a classical Grammy. Meisel put it bluntly: “In the past, winning a classical Grammy has not been as overwhelmingly important as winning a pop Grammy because the performers are not on the television show. Classical has always had a backdoor spot; the best that ever happens is that they’ll read a list at the beginning of the show.”

At the retail level, store managers banked on the Grammys by allocating stock and promoting the most commercial recordings. Musicland classical buyer Dieter Wilkinson said that at the 800-outlet chain, the process started with the nominations: “Initially, we will have done some reallocations of the nominated releases in our key classical stores, where the majority of our classical business is done.

“When the winners are announced, we see how commercial each is likely to be. The Bartok Quartets will probably do well in our key stores. If Karajan’s Bruckner Eighth had won, it might have gone into 100 stores. When a Beethoven Fifth wins, it will go into 500 stores. And a Beethoven Fifth by Karajan will go into all 800.”

For some, the nomination is enough. Clarinetist Gary Gray, nominated in 1988 in the concerto category, said: “The nomination had overwhelming positive effects: It helped sales of the record and set up a nice atmosphere of accolade that I didn’t have before.” Partly as a result of the nomination, Gray is recording two more discs for Unicorn. “I’m getting more solo work, too,” he said, “and I’ve even got a manager for the first time.”

Gray, a local musician who plays in the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, said that “a lot of people picked up the news piecemeal, a lot of people thought I won it, and others came up to me saying, ‘Congratulations on the Emmy!’ ”

Gray laughed. “But, for a while, it was like being David in the company of giants.”

OJAI: Stephen Mosko will serve as music director of the 1990 Ojai Festival, June 1-3, leading the San Francisco Contemporary Players, the Ojai Festival Chamber Orchestra and the California E.A.R. Unit in a celebration of American music’s diversity over the past two decades.

The season’s composer-in-residence is Elliott Carter.

As in the past, five major concerts will be given in Ojai Festival Bowl with other events including concerts at Ojai Presbyterian Church.

The California E.A.R. Unit opens the festival with a three-hour program beginning at 7 p.m., and including music by Steve Reich, Bunita Marcus, Arthur Jarvinen, Rand Steiger and Rachel Rosenthal.

At 10:30 p.m., Morton Feldman’s hour-long “Three Voices for Joan LaBarbara,” set to the poetry of Frank O’Hara, will be given in Ojai Presbyterian Church.

On June 2 at 1 p.m., composer Frederic Rzewski plays the piano in his one-hour-long work, “The People United” and that evening, Mosko will conduct the Ojai Festival Chamber Orchestra in his own composition, “A Garden of Time,” which celebrates Sacramento’s 150th anniversary. On the final day, Mosko will conduct the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players at 11 a.m., then leads the Ojai Festival Chamber Orchestra at the final concert at 5:30 p.m.

More information: (805) 646-2094.

CONDUCTORS: Jorge Mester, music director of the Pasadena Symphony, and for 21 years the music director of the Aspen Music Festival, will step down after the 1990 summer season at Aspen, and thereafter carry the title conductor laureate of the festival. . . . Sergiu Comissiona, already scheduled to take over the reins at the Helsinki Philharmonic in Finland as of 1990-91, will become music director of the Vancouver Symphony as of 1993-94; until then, he will serve as music director-designate of the British Columbia orchestra. Kirk Muspratt, now in his third year as assistant conductor of the St. Louis Symphony, has been named associate conductor of the Utah Symphony effective this summer. Muspratt, was a conducting fellow at the 1988 Los Angeles Philharmonic Institute.