Disney, Beethoven and popular culture

Last night I skipped the All Black / England game and went to the third concert of the Beethoven cycle in which the NZ Symphony Orchestra under Pieatri Inkinen played the nine symphonies over four days.  Last night they played  the sixth and the seventh symphonies . Both were superbly played. Inkinen is a young conductor at the early stage of his career. Conducting this series was an opportunity for him to learn, or rather re-learn, re-think these great works.His approach was traditional. He didn't go for authentic early music interpretation, nor for an excessive romantic approach with tempi or phrasing. It was the beautiful sound and the clear phrasing that stood out, the rich string tone and impeccable solos, notably the flute and the oboe, These concerts attracted full houses, and the orchestra and conductor received a standing ovation. It is not often that the Wellington audience responds with such overwhelming enthusiasm. And rightly so, these were exciting memorable performances. The Pastoral Symphony made me think of Walt Disney's Fantasia, a very corny visualization of the sound, but a laudable attempt to reach a broad audience with classical music. Engaging Stokowsky, at the time one of the most celebrated conductors in America, to conduct this film was at the same period as the NBC founded the NBC Symphony Orchestra for Toscanini to present a series of weekly symphony concerts on radio. I can't imagine in our time a similar commitment by the corporation  to presenting classical music, or for that matter any form of high culture to a mass audience. Visualize someone pitching to a boardroom of executives the idea to engage the highest paid, most renowned conductor in the world, and create an orchestra specially for him to conduct hang the expense, to give weekly concerts of classical music. Would that make money? What would the advertisers think. Now you can't eve screen a reasonable intelligent, challenging television program when people are still be awake. Where is progress? And perhaps an unanswered question is: did the millions of people who listened to these concerts by the NBC Symphony Orchestra, and the millions who learned their appreciation of classical music from Disney's Fantasia become more cultured thinking sensitive human beings?