Carnegie Hall Choral Festival Berlioz Requiem at Carnegie Hall
The New York Times, February 15, 2011

The brilliant bombast and gentle supplication of Berlioz's Grande messe des morts (or Requiem, for short) still ringing in my ears, I decided to pick up a good recording of the work on the way home. (I'd previously thought I owned one, but was mistaken.) From Carnegie Hall I headed straight to the Borders on 57th Street at Park Avenue, where I found one copy of a Requiem recording in stock. But it was an obscure one—not the classic Charles Munch or Colin Davis accounts I wanted, or even the recent Telarc recording conducted by Robert Spano, who supervised the Carnegie Hall performance.

Still, at least Borders had a Requiem in stock, along with perhaps six other Berlioz discs (mostly versions of the Symphonie fantastique, of course). My next stop was the Barnes & Noble at Citicorp Center, which had a measly two Berlioz recordings—both Symphonie fantastique, and each sitting lonely and unloved in its own gaping bin. Depressed, I took my beef to Twitter, where it elicited plenty of sympathy.

I know: the recording industry has changed. For better and for worse we're in a largely post-product era. Sure, anything is available on a moment's notice via the Internet. I had the option of ordering any number of Requiem recordings, classic and otherwise, via a variety of reputable web sources. I could snag Charles Munch's recording, and others besides, as downloads from iTunes or Amazon. I even had the option, were I of a mind to do so, to simply steal almost any desired interpretation via a plethora of torrent sources.

Instead, I listened to Munch on [prominent European streaming platform redacted], and Sony, owner of the BMG catalog, lost a long-tail sale. Which proves that classical CDs don't sell. So, therefore, record stores are obsolete.

Welcome to the future.

Playlist:

Terry Jennings – Piano Piece 1958; Winter Sun; For Christine Jennings; Winter Trees; Piano Piece 1960; John Cage – Electronic Music for Piano – John Tilbury, Sebastian Lexier (Another Timbre)

King Crimson – Live in New Haven, CT November 16, 2003 (Discipline Global Mobile)

Gazpacho – Night (Intact)

Marillion – Front Row Club 013 Rotterdam September 9, 1995; Front Row Club 019 Wolverhampton November 4, 1998; Front Row Club 043 Manchester 30, 2007 (Racket downloads)

Mike Shiflet – Llanos (self-released, via Bandcamp)

Alina Ibragimova and Cédric Tiberghien – Beethoven Violin Sonatas, Vol. 2 (Wigmore Hall)

The Residents – Talking Light Live DC (Residents RSD download)

Shackleton – fabric 55: Shackleton (Fabric Worldwide download, via Boomkat)

Eliane Radigue – Jouet Électronique; Elemental 1 (Alga Marghen)

Ben Johnston – String Quartets Nos. 1, 5 & 10 – Kepler Quartet (New World)

Napalm Death – Fear, Emptiness, Despair (Earache)