David Harbin asks the $64 question:

>Does anyone ever wonder why there are so few front rank US orchestra's
>recording US symphonies?  Are they not interested in their own music in
>the way they seem to record Mahler, Bruckner etc?  For example, one of
>the greatest US violin concertos is Piston's No1.  However the only
>recording is by an orchestra in the Ukraine!  Why aren't The Cleveland,
>Philhadelphia, NY Phil etc putting these onto CD?  Better yet, why not
>record a series and sell at at superbudget prices like LSO Live?

I can suggest several reasons.

1.  For the time being, there will be almost no recording by top U. S.
Orchestras of anything.  It just costs too much.  At those prices, why
should companies take a chance with unfamiliar music?  They're not
librarians or archivists, after all.

2.  Most top U. S. orchestral musicians don't know American music, other
than Copland, Bernstein, Gershwin, Adams, and whatever hot ticket of the
moment, and have no desire to find out.  Same with many conductors of
such orchestras, who are mostly furriners.  Like it or not, the repertoire
is defined mainly by Austro-German composers from Haydn through Mahler.
There's a long U. S. tradition of looking at Europe longingly as the
place where all genuine art comes from.  It takes time to learn unfamiliar
music, and why do it when you could be perfecting your Beethoven Eroica?

3.  It's going to be independent labels -- Chandos, Hyperion, Naxos,
Albany, and so on -- who mainly explore this repertoire.  Most of the
former majors have no idea who buys classical music or what they want
to hear.  The small labels can't afford the Chicago or the Cleveland.
Thomas in San Francisco has done a lot to bring American music to the
consciousness of his audience.  Notice, however, what he gets to record.

Steve Schwartz