Since Bachtrack maintains a highly structured database of many thousands of classical music and opera performances across the world, we're in a unique position to show you some statistics about what gets performed. Following on from my blog about the top composers, I've taken a deep dive into our statistics for 2010: here are the results.
A note for statisticians: clearly, our database only includes a proportion of the concerts performed across the globe. It's a large sample, although not a random one: it's skewed towards the events put on by the largest organisations and those who have chosen, for whatever the reason, to work with us. The sample sizes are as follows: Concerts: 11,724 (2,476 in US) Opera performances: 5,858 (883 in US) Update 27-Jan 2011: click here for more details on these statistics
Composers with most concerts
Here are the composers who featured in the greatest number of concerts during the year: a composer gets an entry if at least one work was performed in a given concert.
Worldwide | USA only | |||
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Beethoven | 1,576 | Beethoven | 306 |
2 | Mozart | 1,260 | Mozart | 285 |
3 | Schumann | 953 | Brahms | 208 |
4 | Bach | 902 | Tchaikovsky | 145 |
5 | Brahms | 879 | Schumann | 139 |
6 | Haydn | 648 | Ravel | 129 |
7 | Schubert | 645 | Mahler | 126 |
8 | Tchaikovsky | 607 | Bach | 125 |
9 | Chopin | 569 | Haydn | 122 |
10 | Mahler | 562 | Stravinsky | 111 |
Chopin, Mahler and Schumann's figures are boosted by the many performances in honour of their anniversaries (Mahler gets another one in 2011). Clearly, the worldwide top ten is very much an Austro-German affair, with only Tchaikovsky and Chopin breaking in from the outside!
Composers with the most works performed
This gives a sense of how prolific a composer was - that is, how much of his output is performed. A composer gets an entry for each of his works that was performed at least once in 2010.
Worldwide | USA only | |||
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Bach | 347 | Mozart | 111 |
2 | Schubert | 281 | Bach | 100 |
3 | Mozart | 271 | Beethoven | 85 |
4 | Chopin | 258 | Chopin | 84 |
5 | Schumann | 229 | Haydn | 63 |
6 | Handel | 212 | Schumann | 57 |
7 | Haydn | 189 | Brahms | 56 |
8 | Beethoven | 182 | Schubert | 37 |
9 | Brahms | 173 | Shostakovich | 34 |
10 | Strauss R | 126 | Stravinsky | 33 |