Purchasers of classical music have never had it so good - as long as they're willing to look online, writes Michael Dervan
The prophets of doom have yet to stop their barking about the demise of the classical record industry. Yet, however real the problems facing labels big and small, not to mention the even clearer travails of bricks-and-mortar record shops, the purchaser of classical CDs has never had so much choice.
To avail of this bounty, you'll need to come to terms with Internet retailing. Go to www.paolo.rhumbo.com/faq.html, which lists classical CD sites in Europe, the US and Canada, and as far away as Australia and Japan. If you're looking for out-of-print or second-hand titles, the Marketplace sellers (from big companies to private individuals) on Amazon's various websites have become a useful starting point. Many smaller record companies sell directly, and at competitive prices, from their own websites.
Although many CDs seem to be seriously over-priced in Ireland, you may well find yourself surprised, as I have done, at the bargains to be had - including recent releases - in major city stores here from time to time.
Naxos, which began as a cheap-and-cheerful source of popular classics, has blazed trails in a range of directions that few pundits ever predicted. Who would have imagined, for instance, that Naxos would be the label to give to the world the Kreutzer Quartet's recordings of the strangely compelling, glissando-rich world of the string quartets of US composer Gloria Coates? The second volume (8.559152) has a memorial to the victims of September 11th.
Naxos has also issued the Milken Archive's series of American Jewish music, which promises "600 newly recorded works by nearly 200 composers" to be issued on 52 discs over the next three years. The selection of klezmer-influenced concertos on 8.559403 is the most attractive of the initial releases that I sampled.
The enterprising small Avie label struck gold with a Handel disc (the cantata La Lucrezia and arias from Theodora and Serse) from mezzo soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson (Avie AV 0030). It's an interesting disc to compare with the Handel arias offered by the creamy soprano of Renée Fleming on Decca (475 6186), one driven by dramatic truth, the other by more conventional and expertly-managed concerns about beauty of tone and vocal virtuosity.
The big labels can strike it rich, too, as did EMI with a new collection, America: A Prophecy, of richly-referential works by English composer Thomas Adès (567 6102), including a wicked setting of a quirky Alfred Brendel poem.
EMI continued its celebration of the work of Romanian conductor Sergiu Celibidache with a new 14-CD set of Bavarian Radio recordings of concerts with the Munich Philharmonic (557 8612, also available as 11 separate issues). These are extraordinary ventures of musical information retrieval, where startlingly slow tempos go hand in hand with equally extraordinary feats of re-creative genius.
Deutsche Grammophon documented the fabulous new Lucerne Festival Orchestra in revealing live performances of Debussy's La mer and Mahler's Resurrection Symphony under Claudio Abbado (477 5082, 2 CDs). The yellow label also brought a rare new issue from Polish pianist Krystian Zimerman, in sharp performances of Rachmaninov's First and Second Piano Concertos (459 643-2). Stephen Hough recorded all of Rachmaninov's works for piano and orchestra for Hyperion (SACD SACDA 67501/2, 2 CDs) with a romantic impetuosity rarely matched on disc.
Impetuosity has always been a favoured mode of baroque violinist Andrew Manze, whose Harmonia Mundi recording of Concertos for the Emperor by Vivaldi (HMU 907332) found him at the top of his form.
Warner Classics issued Charles Ives's Concord Sonata in a performance of illuminating virtuosity by French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard (2564 60297-2), and offered a selection of 17 of Ives's highly individual songs (with mezzo soprano Susan Graham) as the attractive coupling.
One of the most haunting song cycles I've ever heard is on ECM, in the strange, half-lit singing that Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov demands in his Silent Songs (ECM New Series 1898/99), which play the composer's familiar trick of blending past and present so something new sounds first and foremost like a memory. After listening to these you'll wonder why you've never heard the name of baritone Sergey Yakovenko before.
ECM also issued Eugène Ysaÿe's six sonatas for solo violin in a recording by Thomas Zehetmair (ECM New Series 1835), who brings a rare illumination to the music's unusual musical and technical challenges.
The flow of high-quality re-issues also continues. My picks of the year: a magical Chopin collection from Polish pianist Halina Czerny-Stefanska (Pearl GEM 0209); Russian soprano Galina Vishnevskaya as the muse of Shostakovich (EMI Classics 562 8292); and Marius Constant's uniquely coloured conducting of Messiaen's Des canyons aux Étoiles ... (Apex 2564 60427-2, 2 CDs).
