David Stewart wrote:

>What we need is a new Benjamin Britten.  Let the record labels get their
>teeth into something.  Or follow Chandos's example and find some stuff that
>hasn't been recorded yet - I got an advert a while back for VW/Bax CD, both
>pieces had not been recorded before.  If I had money to spend on full price
>recordings in the UK, I would have availed myself of it.

For reference, a full-price disc in the UK costs about UKP 14.00 to 15.00
($23.00 - $24.00) in the shops, or UKP 11.00 to 12.00 ($18.00 - $19.00)
by mail order.  Non-EU residents wouldn't have to pay VAT so would get
them about 15% cheaper.  Naxos and other "super-bargain" discs cost about
UKP 4.00 to 5.00 each ($7.00 - $8.00).  There's little price difference
between shops and mail order, but the shops carry a limited selection.
The "bargain" and "mid-price" categories are normally somewhere in between,
but there are sporadic and unpredictable sales in the shops where individual
labels get reduced.  If you wait long enough, sooner or later these will
appear somewhere at about UKP 5.00 too.

As I see it, the problem isn't so much the price of full-priced discs
(AIUI, they're even more expensive in other parts of Western Europe) as
the huge relative difference between full-priced and bargain-priced discs.
Is this the same in other countries?

There are several full-priced discs which I consider to be good value -
I'll limit myself to one example, the Lyrita series of Rubbra symphonies.
The discs are well-recorded, have good performances, and each run to 70+
minutes, and at the time I bought them, they were the only available
recorded performances of the works.

However, money is finite, and I have to try to make best use of what
I've got.  Companies which expect me to pay full price for recordings of
standard repertoire are either stupid or think I am.  Beethoven symphonies
have been mentioned.  For about the price of _one_ full-priced disc, you
can buy the entire Cluytens cycle of Beethoven symphonies.  I like this
cycle (it's the one I grew up with, when it was on LP on CFP), but for
those who don't, any of the complete cycles by Szell, Morris or Zinman
(all of which get excellent reviews) would cost less than the price of
two full-priced discs.

In the hypothetical case where someone has UKP 70.00 to spend on CDs
this month/year/decade, is that someone more likely to blow the lot on
a full-price Beethoven symphony cycle by Conductor X, or to get a good
bargain-price version and have UKP 50.00 left to spend on something more
obscure?

This leaves me wondering about (i) the motivation of conductors who
continue to make recordings of standard repertoire works to be sold at
full price, and (ii) the quality of performance they're going to produce
when they must know that hardly anyone is going to buy the disc.

Peter Varley
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