Negotiating Liveness: Technology, Economics, and The Artwork in Lso Live

In 2000, following a decade of steadily decreasing investment in classical recordings, the London Symphony Orchestra launched its own label, LSO Live. By combining live recording with an innovative business and rights management model, and aided by falling distribution costs through the development of MP3 files and the internet, the orchestra was able to offer recordings at budget prices. Yet the success of the label, which ‘even penetrated the hallowed shelves of the Sainsbury’s supermarkets chain, normally occupied only by pop CDs or "crossover" albums’, was the product of a carefully crafted publicity campaign. Traditionally considered second best in the record industry, live recording had to be justified by the musicians for themselves and the outer world. This article, based on interviews and observations of the LSO while recording during the 2007^8 season, examines the aesthetic discourses that came to the fore while making sense of the less than ideal working conditions. As I aim to illustrate, the conflicting expressions of classical music emerging during this period are concisely captured by Lydia Goehr’s dialectic of the ‘perfect musical performance’ and the ‘perfect performance of music’.