Classical music's 2013 in facts and figures

Event database website Bachtrack's lists of last year's busiest conductors and most performed composers makes for interesting, but dispiriting, reading
Benjamin Britten, 1976
Benjamin Britten, the UK's most performed composer last year. Photograph: Erich Auerbach/Getty Images

There are statistics - and there are statistics. Some fascinating - and alarming - classical music data was released earlier this week by The site, the internet's biggest classical-events-lister, has trawled its databases - which take in operatic and concert performances all over the world - to compile lists of last year's busiest musicians and orchestras and the most performed composers and pieces of 2013.

You can spend an illuminating half-hour looking through the stats, but the headlines for me are frankly appalling, namely the disgraceful dearth of female conductors and composers on the top 100 lists. There is precisely one woman in the top 100 busiest conductors list (Marin Alsop at no 70) and precisely zero women among the 100 most performed composers. You have to go to 182nd on the list to find Clara Schumann, and to 202 to find the most performed living female composer, Judith Bingham. Together, those statistics are a revealing indictment of the gender imbalance of the industry, and despite any protestations to the contrary, there's still a ludicrously long way to go. These statistics surely should embarrass the classical music world into changing. Will 2014 be any different? Here's hoping.

Marin Alsop
Marin Alsop, the only woman in the world's 100 busiest conductors list. Photograph: Chris Christodoulou

The most performed composer in the UK in 2013? Alright, so he might have had an anniversary-industry behind him, but it's still amazing and heartening that Benjamin Britten is top of the statistical pegging order; worldwide, his most performed piece was the War Requiem, and internationally, Britten was the fourth most popular composer.

For the first time in the four years Bachtrack have been putting their lists together, Mozart ousted Beethoven as the world's most performed composer. No surprises that Valery Gergiev was officially the busiest conductor, that Messiah was the single most performed concert work, or that La Traviata was the most staged opera; more surprising was that Wagner's most performed opera The Flying Dutchman, was placed a relatively distant 12th.