Cultural institutions tend to have evolved over centuries with their own specific history, internalised traditions and cultural identities, with complex and firmly anchored structures and production and working conditions, flanked by bureaucratic guidelines, funding requirements and cultural policy parameters. This talk takes a closer look at why the classical music sector, is – compared to other disciplines – extremely resistant to transformation and diversity. There are many reasons for this immutability which are interrelated, mutually dependent and self-potentiating. But transformation and diversity approaches can only be successful in the long term, if it starts with a critical questioning of the norms, biases and barriers inscribed in classical music and its institutions.