Requiem for Maestro Muti?

When talking about the electronic revolution, you mentioned incidentally that it had produced a revolution in the world of music which was already accomplished, unlike its effects on the family which are not yet fully spelt out. Can you explain?

I was referring to the fact that the internet has practically brought to an end the history of the recording of classical music. The first recording of a symphony took place less than a 100 years ago. It was Beethoven's Fifth, in 1914. By the end of the 20th century nearly 300 different recordings of it had been made.

Recording had made possible a new kind of musical culture. On one hand, it became possible to compare precisely the differences in interpretation given by different conductors. On the other, it almost abolished the wide range of even quirky interpretation indulged in previously by some conductors.

In the heyday of the recording studios, certain freedoms enjoyed by performance on the concert stage became unthinkable; for instance Mahler would never have told Otto Klemperer to make whatever changes he thought appropriate to his music according to the acoustics of the hall in which it was being performed.

By the beginning of the 21st century, the spate of recorded music had stopped. Before, six big companies, or 'labels', were producing some 700 new recordings a year. By 2007, only two, EMI and DG-Decca, were producing - on average only about six recordings per month - and most of these were film music and cross concoctions of classical with pop.

Plainly most people are downloading what they wish to hear from the internet for free, instead of buying recordings that were usually priced at two per cent of their global turnover. Unfortunately, the best fare available by these means, from iTunes, the BBC and Finland's YLE can easily be heard to fall well below CD standards.

Because of this a very positive result has already ensued. Many more people have been returning to the concert hall, where more conductors, thanks to the dotcom boom, seem to have reacquired the full freedom of interpretation that they had lost during the short century between the birth and the demise of classical recording.

Is there any reflection of this global change on the Maltese music scene?

I am not sure internet has counted at all in it, but a tremendous improvement in the level of local live offerings of classical music has certainly occurred.

There has been the augmentation of the National Orchestra to philharmonic size. This has enabled Michael Laus to produce a sound that marks as great a leap forward as that he had previously achieved over the years in the course of which he had coaxed the orchestra to make magnificent forward strides.

Admittedly, many of the excellent newly recruited musicians were not born in Malta and their presence here would yield even more desirable results if they could also be integrated into our still atrociously weak system of musical education.

The building of the School of Music is in a visibly perilous state and it is clear that the pleas of its mostly quite creative staff have somehow been falling on deaf or at least tone-deaf ears.

Last year there was a lot of talk of the involvement of no less a person than Maestro Riccardo Muti in the setting up of a vitally needed academy or conservatory of music. Muti spoke to me personally about his enthusiasm to devote this phase of his life following his years at the Scala to the education of young musicians. He was especially interested in rekindling the ability to perform music in which European and Arab elements were fused.

This desire goes with his efforts to revive Neapolitan Baroque Music. He is very conscious of its uniquely inclusive Mediterranean character. He felt that an academy in Malta would cater for the needs that had often been expressed to him from various Arab countries.

When he declared these intuitions at a press conference in Rome widely reported in the international press, it was publicity for Malta very difficult to match even with costly advertisement. Unfortunately, nothing more has been heard of the project.

Apart from Muti, the future of music in Malta absolutely needs an academy to cater not only for classical music but for all kinds, including those produced by enthusiastic but not well-trained brass and pop bands.

You are proud of having established Music Studies at the University. Are you happy with its contribution?

There can hardly be any doubt about several achievements and also about the extent of what remains to be done. For instance, good-sized audiences heard compositions by Christopher Muscat and Josef Bugeja played by the National Philarmonic Orchestra in the past fortnight, as well as by Albert Garcia and Mariella Cassar in Gozo.

I am sure that all present must have recognised the creative stimulus that Charles Camilleri gave to his students. In spite of his stroke, his eyes still light up with joy at their accomplishments.

Congregations made up of both local and foreign members have swollen at St John's Co-Cathedral because of the new level of choral singing attained, very largely thanks to Dion Buhagiar. Performances by the likes of Caroline Calleja and Claire Massa are evidence of a quality leap of the same scale as that made by the orchestra, both under the direction of Laus. The musicological revival of old Maltese baroque music initiated by Joseph Vella is being carried to new heights by John Galea and Frederick Aquilina .... There is no space for other examples.

Fr Peter Serracino Inglott was talking to Miriam Vincenti.