How
to Shop for Classical CDs and DVDs
by Lawrence Schenbeck, D.M.A. (updated 12/04/03)
Quick Click to:
Where to Shop
(Physical Stores)
Cutouts and
Imports (Internet)
A word of warning. Music should be an experience, not a commodity. A great live performance offers more than any recording could--spontaneity, community, and a sense of occasion. As an audience member, you can contribute to that. If you keep going to concerts and recitals, you will accumlate some really memorable experiences. Why then collect recordings? We all have our reasons: It’s impossible to get to every concert. They aren’t playing what we need right now. It costs too much. Whatever. Recordings fill the gap. They also encourage study. You can manipulate them (pause, stop, fast forward), whereas live performers resist that sort of thing. And recordings provide certain experiences that can't be obtained any other way: you'll never hear Marian Anderson sing again, except on disc.
Below, I offer some
advice based on my own limited experiences as a collector. I've tried to follow
a handful of basic principles: First, explore and be adventurous. If you liked
one Brahms symphony, try the others. If you liked La traviata, try Macbeth
or Nabucco or Otello. And then go on to Puccini or whatever.
Let your tastes lead you, not imprison you. But do learn to trust your own
instincts. Don't be intimidated by friends, teachers, or critics. As long as
you're not hopelessly blind about your prejudices, you won't become trapped in
them. Listen and re-listen. Actively, intensely, totally. In a room, by
yourself or with thoughtful friends. You need to experience great music,
not just own it. As you live with them, some performances will continue to
provide new insights, but others may wear out. When that happens, move on. One
CD of the Mahler
Fifth is not enough. (In my case, apparently, six CDs of the Mahler Fifth
are not enough.) Finally, budget and plan most of your purchases:
classical music collecting usually works best when it’s not done on impulse.
Beginning CD collectors are often shocked to find out how much classical product is available. A recent catalog listed over 80 different recordings of Mozart's Symphony No. 40 in G Minor. Even though some of these listings represent the same performance issued with different couplings, that's an enormous number of performances. And they are different. Every performer finds something unique to say within the bounds of the printed score. Some performances catch fire and pass it on to you; others just lie there. Acoustics of hall or studio, sound of the piano, singer's personality, etc. etc. can also make a profound collective difference. You will hear the difference, and it will matter to you.
But which recording is the one to have (or at least start with)? Perhaps you already have a favorite soloist or conductor, someone you prefer over all others in certain repertory. Then your choice will be easy. For the rest of us, a little help is useful. You won't find it at most record stores. Clerks tend to be ignorant and rude (bear in mind that they're badly paid). Fortunately, several good published guides exist. I recommend The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs. It's a thick paperback that's updated frequently, available at bookstores, libraries, and some record stores. Another good, more concise source is The Gramophone Classical Good CD Guide. It's a yearly publication of Gramophone magazine.
Gramophone is a venerable British monthly devoted to reviews of new releases, plus occasional surveys of older material, favorite repertory, etc. It comes with a CD in every issue that lets you hear the editors' favorites for the month. You'll find a more youthful approach in BBC Music Magazine, also monthly with a CD. Classic fM, also British, also with CD, tries even harder to reach young readers. All these magazines include articles or guides to basic repertory as well as excursions into more esoteric stuff. Like The Penguin Guide, they often rate CDs against one another, declaring a winner when possible. That can be useful when you want to try something new. Try the Web sites of these three publications (click above); they feature interviews, breaking news, and surprises. The Gramophone site includes GramoFile, a searchable index of all past reviews. Very handy. (BBC MM and Classic fM are also affiliated with radio channels that now Webcast classical music, so some of their content is linked to that service.)
More good sources on the Web: check out the daily Classics Today, featuring reviews, guides to the repertoire, buying services, and more. A new site, iclassics.com, offers even more bells and whistles, but users should note that it is owned and operated by Universal Classics and emphasizes artists from those labels (Decca, Deutsche Grammophon, Philips et al.). More inclusive is NPR's Web site: their wide-ranging coverage of music includes frequent tips on building a basic collection, drawn up by repertory maven Ted Libbey. Find similar offerings at Classical Net. The Web site for H&B Recordings Direct (see below) contains a complete current catalog, with indications of which recordings have received favorable reviews from The Penguin Guide, Gramophone, American Record Guide, and Fanfare. Some of the online CD stores (see below) also have augmented their classical Web pages with interviews, reviews, and helpful guides to the repertoire.
A new player on the Internet scene is Andante.com. Their approach is unabashedly elitist, and that’s kind of refreshing. You’ll find few attempts at dumbing down the content or reaching out to the ignorant. Instead, Andante offers classy, continuing features on a wide range of serious musicians, from the staid (the “new” Salzburg Festival) to the adventurous (lengthy essays by Philip Glass and his friends). By subscribing to their premium service, you get additional services -- streaming audio concerts, a reference library based on the New Grove Dictionary, and more. Andante’s primary business is CDs: they issue a limited number of great performances from previous generations, in state-of-the-art digital remasterings and deluxe packaging. If you’re the sort of person who cultivates single-malt Scotch or high-end audio, you will gravitate toward Andante. The rest of us can also enjoy their offerings, too. It costs far less to listen to a Webcast of the Concertgebouw Orchestra than to get behind the wheel of a Ferrari.
Price Structure
Classical CDs come in three basic price categories: full-price, mid-price,
budget. A full-price CD runs $16 - $19. Mid-price is about $10 - $12. Budget,
$5 - $7. Of course, if you nose around Wal-Mart or Best Buy, you'll find
“classical” CDs going as low as $2 or $3. Avoid them. They're unpredictable,
whereas you can find 
really great
performances in any of the three basic categories if you do a little homework.
Full-price CDs are generally put out by major labels, featuring big-name stars, major orchestras, new digital recordings. We're talking Pavarotti, Bartoli, the Vienna Philharmonic. After those performances have been out there for several years, they may be quietly removed from the catalog (see the discussion of cutouts below), then re-released as mid-price "classics." Some of the better mid-price lines right now are RCA Living Stereo and High Performance, Mercury Living Presence, DG The Originals, Sony Bernstein Century and Essential Classics, Philips Duo, and Double Decca. Many of these are part of a reissue explosion fed by boomers' nostalgia for great performances from the early stereo era (to about 1975). The latter two represent the CD rebirth of the beloved two-fer, a marketing scheme offering two CDs for about the price of one.
The major labels also had longstanding budget lines: EMI's Seraphim, RCA's Victrola or Greatest Hits, Sony's Odyssey. These were usually performances with a little more dated sound or not quite the pizzazz of the mid-price reissues. Cover art was cheesy, liner notes minimal or missing. In the past decade, new life has been breathed into this category. The star among budget lines is Naxos. For $7 each, they feature newly recorded, energetic performances of the central repertory plus specialty items. Nearly all their performances are acceptable, and some have even won the coveted Rosette from The Penguin Guide. Few big names but usually very good performances. Use the low prices to take a chance on something new. Other labels have begun (desperately!) to copy Naxos' approach; one very promising competitor is BMG's Arte Nova. In January 2001 Universal Classics rolled out its own superbudget line, Eloquence. These are reissues from the stereo catalogs of DG, Philips, and Decca, done up in surround sound and color-coded packaging to make things easy for the beginning collector.
If you don’t live in Manhattan or another major cultural center, it’s hard to walk into a music shop and find exactly what you want. In fact, it’s not that easy in Manhattan. Although I’ve pretty much given up on physical retail stores, here’s a brief summary of those places:
Megastores and megabookstores vary greatly, depending on size and location. Barnes & Noble and Borders do better in this category. Also, they have listening booths where you can hear new releases. Media Play and Best Buy can be OK too, especially for popular items. Beware of misleading or inept shelving (e.g., The Magic Flute under "Galway, James"). Music Superstores like the legendary Tower Records outlets and their imitators, HMV and Virgin Megastores, offer better selection and fairly competitive prices, at least when compared to mall retailers. They may even have clerks who know something. However, Tower doesn't always restock quickly (or at all), which may mean they'll have fourteen versions of the Schumann "Spring" Symphony, but not the one you really wanted. And what if you live in Olathe, Kansas?
Record clubs. If you're building a basic collection or seeking a high-visibility item, give BMG or Columbia House a try. I prefer BMG for its well-designed online search and prompt delivery. Selection and delivery time have improved greatly. Price is the big draw, of course: you can average $8 a CD if you shop shrewdly. My problem with clubs is this: once you've established a basic collection, what you may really want (e.g., Bach cantatas on a Swedish label, avant-garde jazz from Switzerland) isn't available. Yet you find yourself buying from a club because of its prices and come-ons. I guess that's capitalism in action.
Online
superstores and boutiques: These are my first choice.
Convenient, comprehensive, and safe. Web sites have some common advantages:
they're always open, they provide more-or-less-informed guidance, and they've
got it or will get it. Put your selection(s) in a virtual shopping cart, give
them your mailing address and credit card information over a secure, encrypted
line, and you've bought the CD. It may arrive the same week. Pricing is usually
"discount," which means that full-price will be about $14.50 for
domestic issues, mid-price about $10. If you buy more than one disc, shipping
& handling will be free, or at least lower than what you'd pay one of the clubs.
Unfortunately the recent shakedown in dotcom enterprises, combined with harsh economic realities for CD distributors, has made life more difficult for collectors. I used to get nearly everything at Amazon.com: they bill correctly, they ship promptly, they have (or had!) deep catalog and a good search engine. But Amazon has had to adopt more of a bottom-line attitude toward their stock. As a result, classical CDs are occasionally harder to purchase there: more items come up with “not available” tags or else a 4-to-6-week shipping time. Perhaps Amazon’s recent acquisition of CDNow, their most important online competitor, will re-deepen their classical catalog. Intrepid consumers will still benefit from widening their horizons.
I now divide my money and attention between half a dozen online retailers. Tower Records has greatly improved. If you like the physical Tower stores and their hipper-than-thou promotional spirit, you'll like their Web site. They tend to push unusual product that you might not otherwise hear about; they may also have imports and out-of-print items. Also, check out H&B Direct. They have a complete online catalog with a relatively efficient search engine, and they rate the recordings. There are two disadvantages to H&B: to get the cheapest prices, you must buy a yearly membership. And they appear to back-order all but new releases and featured items, which may mean waiting a while for your goodies to arrive. (At least this was my experience several years ago; things may have improved.) Labels and distributors are also getting into the retail game: besides iclassics.com (see above) a number of smaller players show distinct promise. I recently placed orders with the Harmonia Mundi Boutique, which stocks a number of small foreign labels (Hyperion, Dutton Labs, Naive Astrée, et al). They carry complete stock, they ship in one business day, and their prices are very competitive. It pays to shop around.
When you’re shopping online, don’t forget to check the cutout and import dealers. I no longer recommend online sources for used CDs. On such sites, single items go quickly, usually to someone else. However, online sources for cutouts (discontinued stock) are a different story -- shopping for them is less like playing the lottery. One terrific source for cutouts is Berkshire Record Outlet. Prices range from $2 upward. They have a good search engine, and they will send you catalogs with updates on their stock. Another source for heavily discounted CDs is CyberMusic Surplus, the clearance arm of Allegro Music. Allegro distributes dozens of independent and overseas labels. CyberMusic offers lots of CDs from those labels' catalogues at about half price.
Imports. Occasionally it’s cheaper and/or faster to buy a CD from a European vendor. There are other good reasons to get acquainted with importers too. Certain classical labels are notorious for not releasing everything in North America, or else releasing it a year after it hits Europe and Japan. Wary U.S. distributors no longer carry every release from boutique labels like Kairos (Berlin). If you read about a new CD in BBC Music Magazine or Gramophone and you've just gotta have it now, salvation is at hand. British retailers will ship promptly and at a competitive price: my favorite is MDT Mail Order. (You will have an easier time ordering if you know the artist, title, label, and/or catalog number.) If you're just browsing, you may be more comfortable with Amazon's British Web site. Neither MDT nor British Amazon will add VAT to your bill, but they will tack on air freight -- MDT's is a modest £ 0.75 per disc. As with U.S. retailers, you'll need a working credit card. Prices are listed in British Pounds, so you may want to bookmark an online currency converter.
More Imports. Here is another import site worth trying. The Czech outfit Musica Bona operates a CD buying service pretty much limited to Czech music performed by Czech performers on Czech labels. They also sell sheet music and offer a continuous, commercial-free Internet radio broadcast. Their prices, including free shipping to the States, are 25% lower than American list on such labels as Supraphon and Praga. If you like Kubelik, Ancerl, the Czech Philharmonic, et al., this is the best deal you can get short of hopping a plane to Prague. This site has very high BizRate numbers too; may it live long and prosper. Now let's see Hungary, Poland, and Lower New Jersey follow suit.
Increasingly, opera and concert fans are turning to DVD video when they want to experience a great performance. The advantages should be obvious: opera is enormously visual, and subtitles and chapter cues make a four-hour opera like Die Meistersinger far more accessible. A DVD can also provide extras, like rehearsal footage, optional commentary tracks or score overlay, and more. Older performances are often issued in PCM stereo, while newer ones may have multichannel channel sound available. Video and audio are usually a huge improvement over VHS tapes. If you are into home theater, sooner or later you will become a convert to DVD classical video. (Rumors surfaced last year that Universal Music will soon cease—or at least attenuate—their CD releases of opera recordings, focusing instead on DVD. Well, why not?) Even though this is still a niche market, there’s already a lot of product out there. Besides Amazon and Tower, give the Metropolitan Opera Guild’s Opera Shop a try. They have a nice selection, and you’ll be supporting a great American cultural institution.
Buying import DVDs can be dangerous. Bear in mind that European television standards (PAL) are different from North America’s (NTSC). Also, DVDs are coded for use in specific regions only: North America is Region 1. So, even if your player is an “all-region” unit, your television may not be able to handle output from DVDs coded for PAL. The good news is that many European televisions now come with convertors that can handle either PAL or NTSC standards, so more Europeans are buying NTSC videos with Region 0 (all-region) coding. Browsing a European DVD retail site like DVD4Music may not only give you some good ideas about repertory, you may even be able to buy product there that works on your player. Just be careful. On European sites, look for “Region 0” and the NTSC anagram before you buy. (The staff at DVD4Music will also respond to queries about specific discs.)