Are there many composers of classical music these days?
I’m talking full blown symphonies, concertos, etc.
Philip Glass springs to mind, though many folks wouldn’t count him since he’s a minimalist, John Adams has done several operas, Henryk Górecki has done at least three symphonies, and there’s others I’m certain. So while classical composers aren’t doing as well as rock stars, they’re okay.
Classical music is alive and well in movie scores: John Williams, Howard Shore, etc.
There’s only a small number of composers who make a living just from composing - most, even comparitively well-known ones, are employed by universities or music colleges, and so double up in a teaching role.
Most composers do not, however, write ‘full-blown symphonies’ - to discuss why would involve a lenghty discussion of 20th Century music history. Suffice to say it’s a genre with a lot of baggage. Concertos, on the other hand, are still being written by the dozen 
As for performances, these either take place within the structure of mainstream concert programming, or (more frequently) with specialist ensembles dedicated to contemporary music - in the UK, the biggest are the London Sinfonietta and the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group. There’s also small groups with a similar specialism, such as the Arditti Quartet.
Film music is a different genre entirely.
Tell that to Prokofiev. 
Ahhh, Soviet film music is different again 
I have heard (but don’t know for a fact) that Billy Joel’s Fantasies and Delusions is the best-selling “classical” (Would “symphonic” be a better word?) album of all time, even though it’s the worst-selling Billy Joel album to date. Hate to see the stars of classical music settling for scraps from the table of pop music, but that’s pretty much the case.
I would guess that most new classical music is written for junior high and senior high school orchestras. You wouldn’t be aware of it unless you were a music teacher, or you went to a lot of school concerts.
I think back in the 1800’s audiences of classical music flocked to concerts to hear something new. Nowadays they seem to avoid concerts of new music. If you want to fill a concert hall today, just put an old warhorse on the program, like Beethoven’s fifth.
There’s a LOT of new choral music written in “classical style” still being written - including some with full orchestra scores. Rutter comes to mind, along with Canadian composers Daley, Raminsh and such… So it’s not a completely DEAD art, but as it’s been said, to fill the music hall nowadays, you need the old classics.
I try to interest all my piano and voice students in composing their own stuff, and so far so good!
A quick read of this thread would demonstrate that “classical” music is in sad shape indeed: Philip Glass is about as classical as Montavani or Yanni, and most film music is nowhere near worthy of the label.
FWIW, the term I hear frequently to describe the music you’r asking about is “art” music: music that’s composed to stand on its own as a work of art.
I’m not as up on it as I was a few years ago, when I listened to Chicago’s WFMT–the world’s greatest classical music station–16-20 hours a day. But John Corigliano (who’s Symphony #1, a very powerful requiem for victims of AIDS, inspired by the AIDS Quilt, will, IMHO, stand the test of time) comes to mind. Sure, he pays the rent with film scores–Altered States, The Red Violing–but his symphonies and operas continue the tradition of art music.
John Adams, mentioned above, is another important figure in modern art music. His Nixon in China is one of the few operas of recent decades that’s likely (again, IMHO) to become a permament part of the repertoire.
There are many, many serious composers toiling away out there, and scoring for film and television does offer many of them opportunities to make a living. FYI, WFMT’s website, while it has no streaming audio (too expensive, broadcast rights and all), has a discussion board. I’m sure there are plenty of knowledgeable people there who’d be open to such questions.
If you want a half-empty hall, you programme an overplayed piece such as Beethoven’s fifth.
‘Art music’ is a dreadful term. It’s horribly snobbish and biased, automatically implies that all other genres are not art, and therefore inferior - both of which are completly wrong. There’s nothing wrong about using the term ‘classical music’ in the wider sense - after all, in its narrow meaning it doesn’t even include Beethoven.
Adams and Corigliano are good representatives of the most mainstream, accessible music. They’re also two of the few composers that make a living from their compositions alone, as I mentioned earlier. If the OP was asking for new music being written that ‘sounds like Beethoven’, then it’s a futile task. Nobody can write such music now with any artistic purpose, any more they can write like Wordsworth or paint like Monet.
BBC Radio 3 have a weekly new-music programme, Hear and Now, which is both streamed and available on demand.
What exactly differentiates classical music from other styles? That’s an important question to answer before you can say how it’s doing these days.
If you look at the “Classical” bins at Tower Records, you’ll see a lot of stuff that would be surprised to find itself being called “Classical,” including John Williams, George Gershwin, Gilbert & Sullivan, Rogers & Hammerstein, etc. (Wonder how long before Duke Ellington turns up there?) I think Bond (Four lingerie models playing stringed instruments, tarted up with disco studio work*) still sells out of the Classical shelves, but really shouldn’t. And acts with a little bit of classical and a lot of pop and Broadway (Three Mo’ Tenors, Sarah Brightman, Charlotte Church, James Galway, Dame Kiri te Kanawa) get relegated there because there’s no other place for them in a standard music store.
*If you want to hear hot babes playing classical or chamber music, forget Bond. They’ll wind up with the Shania Twain and Candy Dulfer discs you bought and listened to once because of a sexy video and then ever again because the music was crap. Instead, go straight to the Eroica Trio or Sarah Chang. You’ll hate yourself marginally less in the morning.
I agree that it’s lacking, as a term, but I disagree that it automatically implies anything, other than it’s music that was written to stand on its own as a piece of art, and not to support or provide background for something else. And distinguishes it from “pop music”–i.e., music from the populace; from outside of academia.
How can you tell the difference between art music and pop music?
You’ve struck my curiosity there, because I have long ago come to believe that whatever is being written nowadays (20th century & onwards…) under the “classical” genre is all that a-tonal, no-melody, excercise-in-abstraction, soneone-fell-into-the-orchestra-pit stuff 
…
Are there, (including the above folks) any contemporary composers that write symphonic music that has some melody, substance and can stir emotions (other than confused frustration) and might, dare I even suggest, be beautifull (without falling into the Mantovanni / 1000 strings elevator schmaltz)?
Ok, so I realise I’m asking a lot…
I must admit I had also concluded that the last refuge of classical symphonic music was film scoring, with John Williams and even more so, imho, Howard Shore.
Please enlighten me…
Dude, that is so 1950s. Minimalism, which began (I think) in the sixties, and continues to be one of the more prominent schools of modern art music, is very pro-euphony. At its worst, it still goes down pretty easily (Philip Glass); at its best, it can be complex and challenging, but still melodic and euphonic (Adams, Reich).
Well, IMHO, Philip Glass is Montovani’s child, but there’s NO era in which *overly * emotionally manipulative music (e.g., Rachmaninoff, Tschaikovsky) was not looked down upon by some.
Williams a hacking, hackish, hacky hack who makes me hack. Howard Shore has moments of near-brilliance–in the medium of film scores, I’d personally rank him highish–but his stuff doesn’t hold a candle to Corigliano or Adams or Reich. IMHO.
Most film music to most art music hold about the same relationship as most song lyrics to most poetry: all but the most infinitesimally small fraction of the most brilliant song lyrics don’t stand on their own without the music; a similar fraction (IMHO) of film music works without its movie to hold it up.
Like anything else in the “arts,” there are gray areas. In this context, though, I think of the borderline as the moat drawn around academia: “art” music is a product of musical education: giants standing shoulders, as it were: composers who are *schooled * in composition and who compose within that tradition.
Pop music, in this context, is *popular * music: not as in lots of people like it, but as in it comes from the people. From outside of musical academia. Folk music, rock music, “ethnic” music, etc.
There are huge overlaps of course, although mostly one-way: many members of the academy “break free” and become creators of “popular” music. There is much less clear a distinction, IMHO, than within the visual arts, where “outsider” art is far more distinct and distinctly different.
But to say it ‘stands on its own’ on purely musical terms eliminates opera, ballet, multimedia collaborations, incidental music for plays,…
Firstly, most ot the ‘no-melody’ music is emotional and powerful - it’s just a very different language to what you’re used to. Familiarity is key. Secondly, the emotions many composers expect and intend to evoke are not necessarily pleasant ones, and they do not necessarily seek a sense of unity and resolution. That’s a result of cultural changes over the past 100 or more years.
There are, however, composers who may fit what I think you’re expecting: Gorecki has already been mentioned, and in a similar vein is Arvo Part. Both, it’s worth noting, started off heavily involved in atonal expressionist music, later growing into what’s often called ‘holy minimalism’, for want of a better term.
I suspect what you really mean here by ‘classical symphonic music’ is ‘big orchestras, whooshing strings, brass fanfares, tear-jerking quiet bits’. All of which are individual identifying features of late-nineteenth century music, which have become a staple part of Hollywood genericism, cut-and-pasted into place as dictated by the storyboard.
Which causes problems with the ‘art music’ of composers who have not come through the traditional routes of musical education.