Music Weekly: The Next 25 Years

In the Year 2050

As the old saying goes, a year’s fortunes are shaped in the Spring. As we begin 2026, I suspect most readers have already made their New Year’s resolutions, at increasing levels of improbability: “This year I will spend less time on my phone and go to sleep earlier.” “This year I will exercise at least twice a week.” “This year I will practice scales and arpeggios every day.”

I, too, have made my resolutions—but they extend beyond 2026. This year is more than just another page turned on a kitten calendar. It feels like a threshold: the moment when the twenty-first century enters its second “quarter.” With the first season now behind us, it is worth pausing to examine what has been cultivated over the past twenty-five years—and what may come into harvest over the next twenty-five. Let us begin with the numbers.

The Past

In 2000, global GDP measured at purchasing power parity—essentially a measure of what local currency can actually buy at home—remained decisively Western-dominated. The United States and Europe together accounted for nearly half of global output, while the combined BRICS and ASEAN economies represented roughly one quarter.

Today, those proportions are approaching inversion. IMF projections suggest that by around 2030, Western economies may stabilize at roughly one quarter of global output, while BRICS and ASEAN countries approach one half, with China at the core.

More importantly, where capital flows, people follow—and culture migrates quietly alongside them.

Last year, China ranked second in the Global Soft Power Index, climbing significantly from eighth in 2021. Cultural products such as TikTok, Labubu, and Black Myth: Wukong have all entered global consciousness. But novelty is not the true marker of change. When a foreign culture ceases to feel “exotic” and instead integrates seamlessly into daily life, a threshold has been crossed. It is not difficult to imagine that the complex ambivalence with which Chinese society viewed the West in the late twentieth century may one day be mirrored in how Western societies come to view China.

Now consider the classical music market. According to Statista and IFPI data, in 2000 roughly four-fifths of global classical ticket revenue was generated in the United States and Europe, while Asia accounted for barely one-tenth. By 2025, the imbalance had narrowed significantly, roughly two-thirds versus one quarter. Most forward-looking projections point toward continued convergence: Asia may reach revenue parity by the late 2030s and surpass the West in audience size even earlier. By mid-century, Asia could plausibly represent half of global classical audiences—and perhaps half of global ticket revenue—with China again in a leading role.

These trajectories are not subtle. The gravitational center of classical music is shifting toward Asia. The more difficult question is whether cultural authority will follow. Can an art form born in Europe and developed over nearly two millennia undergo generational stewardship in Asia?

The Present

The transformation is already visible within conservatories worldwide. Walk through the corridors of Juilliard, the Hochschule für Musik Hannover, or the Royal College of Music, and the faces looking back are no longer unfamiliar. While institutional methodologies vary, Asian enrollment has risen from under ten percent in 2000 to approximately half by 2025—often higher in core disciplines such as piano and strings.

Competition results reflect the same pattern. At the 2025 Chopin Competition, nine of eleven finalists were of Asian descent. Across elite international piano and string competitions, it has become statistically routine for at least half of semifinalists to be Asian. The 2025 Paganini Competition offered an especially striking example: all six finalists were Asian, and the top prize went to the seventeen-year-old Aozhe Zhang (章奥哲), currently studying at the Shanghai Conservatory Middle School.

Over the past two years, a growing number of prizewinners have emerged whose entire formative training occurred within China. Cleveland, Busoni, ARD, Weimar Liszt—the pattern is increasingly visible. As this generation of Asian teachers gains confidence and experience, and as young musicians reassess the strengths of domestic training systems, the trajectory is likely to persist.

Meanwhile, Chinese musicians are assuming roles beyond the solo spotlight. Increasingly, they participate in shaping institutions themselves. Collaborations between conductors such as Long Yu and labels like Deutsche Grammophon reflect shifts not merely in performance presence but in curatorial and aesthetic authority. At the orchestral level, elite ensembles such as the Berlin Philharmonic now include Chinese principals, including violist Diyang Mei and horn player Yun Zeng.

Thus the question of authority resurfaces. If training systems, competition outcomes, and audience bases increasingly concentrate in Asia, can interpretive authority remain indefinitely anchored elsewhere?

Classical music has confronted analogous shifts before. Italian opera did not lose its identity when institutional gravity moved to Paris and Vienna; it was reshaped there. The Austro-German symphonic tradition did not dissolve when institutionalized in London and New York. In each case, authority became gradually shared across generations.

Yet all of those shifts unfolded within a common Euro-Atlantic lineage. What happens when the demographic center expands beyond that lineage?

The Future

One likely outcome is a quiet reversal of the traditional pilgrimage. If the early twenty-first century was defined by young Asian musicians traveling westward for education, the coming decades may see increasing numbers of Western students traveling eastward—particularly for foundational training that has become harder to cultivate systematically at home.

Asian conservatories are increasingly associated with structured technical development, rigorous ear training, and an institutional culture that treats sustained high-intensity work as normative. These systems are not without limitation, but for students raised in more individualized or flexible Western environments, they may come to be viewed as essential formative environments.

Another dimension of this shift may prove even more telling. More Western artists may cease viewing Asia merely as a touring destination and instead establish second residences—or even relocate their professional centers of gravity altogether. Such positional adjustments often precede any formal acknowledgment of shifting authority.

This does not render European systems obsolete. Just as a Canadian student of the erhu must ultimately immerse in Chinese cultural context to grasp its deeper expressive language, classical musicians worldwide will continue to look to Europe for historical grounding, stylistic nuance, and cultural inheritance. What may change is proportion. Continuous multi-year institutional enrollment may give way to shorter, high-intensity residencies at elite festivals and programs such as Verbier or Morningside Music Bridge.

The transition will not be frictionless. Cultural authority rarely yields voluntarily. Established institutions will defend inherited hierarchies of taste and legitimacy. But history suggests that outcomes ultimately determine narrative. Today’s early blossoms tend to multiply.

At the same time, the global talent-selection infrastructure itself is showing strain. International competitions and management systems often resemble a Byzantine mosaic—fragmented networks of juries, agencies, markets, and legacy structures. The result is inconsistency for audiences, strategic confusion for artists, and an increasing mismatch between globalized training pipelines and outdated evaluative mechanisms.

What replaces this architecture may integrate data analytics, artificial intelligence, and more participatory audience models—reconnecting artistic excellence with public engagement in ways the current system struggles to achieve.

As we enter the next quarter of this century, the future is no longer speculative. It is already unfolding. Whether welcomed or resisted, the next custodians of the tradition are gradually assuming their roles. Those who fail to perceive this shift will not impede its course; they will simply awaken one day to discover that history has moved on without them.