A Matter of Choice

“When it comes to consumer choice, it’s hard to beat recordings of the popular classics. There are now around 100 different recordings of the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto, and nearly 200 of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.” Conversely, you’re lucky if you can find even a single recording of that contemporary work your local orchestra played last weekend, and finding more than one recording of a work written after 1970? Forget it. “But now things are changing. As new music loosens up, and finds a genuine public, so the record companies are taking an interest in it.”