June 8 (Bloomberg) -- When times are tough, classical music booms.

In the 1930s and the war that followed, audiences swelled and new musical ensembles were born. In 1937, reading the public mood at the depth of depression, the NBC radio network created a national orchestra for Arturo Toscanini to conduct. Twenty million Americans tuned in to its inaugural concert and the early recordings outsold those of Frank Sinatra.

In London, demand for concerts was so strong in the Depression that the city went from one full orchestra in 1930 to three in 1939 and five by 1945. The first cultural act of the U.S. administration in war-ravaged Berlin was to found an orchestra. The need for serious music in periods of stress was statistically emphatic.

So, is the classical effect repeating itself in a credit- crunch universe? Early soundings show strong responses in Europe and Asia, more cautious ones in the U.S. At London’s Barbican Centre, home of the London Symphony Orchestra and a Great Performers series, classical attendances were up 4 percent in the financial year just ended and gross box-office receipts in the current year were 11.2 percent above the 2008 mark, the arts center said.

At English National Opera, lines snaked around the block for David Alden’s revisionist new production of Benjamin Britten’s “Peter Grimes.” “It’s not often these days you see people outside waving 20 pound notes for tickets,” says ENO’s Artistic Director John Berry.

Liverpool Surge

The Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, resurgent under Russian conductor Vasily Petrenko, reports that ticket sales are up 13 percent since September and income has risen 24 percent. Subscriptions leaped 53 percent in a city where whole streets have boarded-up shop windows and dockside office blocks stand alarmingly vacant.

When tickets went on sale last week for the BBC Proms, the London summer-long classical-music festival, several events sold out in hours. In the U.K., the classical boom is palpable. One in four at Liverpool’s Philharmonic Hall is a first-time attendee. The mayor of London, Boris Johnson, is planting pianos on 31 street corners this month to encourage passers-by to perform.

At high-end events in Europe, there has been no decline. Salzburg this week reported a 5 percent rise for its Whitsun Festival and a two-year sponsorship renewal by watchmakers A. Lange & Soehne. At the Lucerne Festival, all tickets have been sold for Claudio Abbado’s three opening concerts, starting with the premier rows at 290 Swiss francs ($271.52) a seat.

U.S. Caution

The trend in the U.S. is strikingly out of tune with these developments. With opera houses and orchestras suffering endowment crashes, some events have been canceled and concertgoers are thinking twice before purchasing --even at Carnegie Hall.

“One change that we have noticed in the current economic environment,” Clive Gillinson, the hall’s executive and artistic director, says in an interview, “is that our single- ticket buyers are delaying their purchases, waiting longer to buy tickets, looking for discounts and deals. We are early in our subscription campaign for next season, and indicators show that we are retaining numbers of patrons, but they are opting for smaller packages.”

At Washington D.C.’s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, President Michael M. Kaiser says “ticket sales have held steady since the market crash, though we find people buying tickets closer to the event and being a bit more choosy.”

Frisky Dudamel

What sells are the big events with heavy marketing support. Carnegie Hall played to full capacity for all 10 concerts of a complete Mahler cycle with Daniel Barenboim and Pierre Boulez, while the Kennedy Center sold 92 percent of seats for a three- week festival of Arab arts. Hopes of a 1930s-style revival ride on the likes of Gustavo Dudamel, the high-octane Venezuelan set to take over as music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Taking a different measure, classical recording is bucking the industry slump in key areas, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. Sales are on the rise in France and Poland, where they constitute 9 percent of the market, in Austria and Hungary at 11 percent, and in Germany and Australia at 6 percent.

The biggest surge is in China were one in six recordings that are legally traded is of Western classical music, show figures just released by the IFPI. In South Korea, the share is 18 percent. In the U.S., the classical share of record sales is just under 1 percent.

It’s in the young tiger markets, more than at the mature American concert halls, that classical music is finding its future. The signs are that recession is once again accelerating the need for the spiritual consolation that only a symphony can deliver.

(Norman Lebrecht is a critic for Bloomberg News. Any opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer on the story: Norman Lebrecht in London at norman@normanlebrecht.com.

Last Updated: June 7, 2009 19:00 EDT