— Olga Neuwirth, Bählamms Fest (Kairos)
— Xenakis, Orchestral Works, Vol. IV (Timpani)
— Hindemith, Die Harmonie der Welt (Wergo)
— Takemitsu, Piano Works, Roger Woodward (Explore)
— Takemitsu, Works for Flute and Guitar (Ondine)
— Giordano, Fedora (Decca)
— Robert Simpson, Symphonies Nos. 2 and 4 (Hyperion)
I can't believe that someone snapped up that copy of Wilhelm Kienzl's Don Quixote. I left it on the shelf, certain that it would survive to the next round of the discounting derby.
The demise of Tower is very sad, although I am having trouble shedding actual tears for a company that worked so hard to put small stores out of business. There's the beauty of the winner-takes-all economy: when the winner crashes, everybody loses. Could we see a resurgence of local stores and local chains? I bought my first LPs (Horenstein's Bruckner 9, Solti's Mahler 8) at Olssons's in Georgetown. Everyone thought at a certain point that Olssons's was doomed, caught between Tower and Barnes & Noble. But now they're expanding again. Why, as Tony Tommasini asked in the Times, can't we have a good independent store in NYC, perhaps one oriented toward classical and jazz, serving the audiences at Lincoln Center? Well, for one thing, rent. Increasingly, only national chain stores can afford to rent in Manhattan. So we may have to wait a long time.
