I enjoyed reading Steve Schwartz's reminiscences about borrowing records
from the library, an experience which parallels my own early explorations
of CM.  If a recent pessimistic assessment of the CM recording industry by
Anthony Tommasini in the New York Times is any guide, libraries may well
become increasingly important.  However, I remember a twinge of nostalgic
regret when our state library system unloaded all its LPs about ten years
ago, but regrettably did not increase its CD holdings to offer the same
range of music or performances.

I also strongly support the value of CM on the radio.  Certainly, you're
at the mercy of someone's taste and, as happened to me during the pre-dawn
hours the other morning, you may not feel like listening to Verdi's Requiem
before breakfast.  But many stations have some form of published program,
and even the most seasoned listener can find something to tempt.  It's
all very well to be a bit dismissive of standard repertoire, the received
canon - call it what you will - but we always need to remember that there
is constant renewal of CM listeners, and somewhere someone is hearing
Beethoven 5 or the New World for the first time, and, I hope, being blown
away by it.

Recommendations of the "If you like X, then you'll probably like Y" variety
can be self-defeating if you are left to find a CD of Y, spend big bucks on
it and hate it.  Far better to know someone who can say, "What do you think
of this?", and play it to you.  I have been forever grateful to Dennis, who
worked in a record store where I bought as many jazz records as I could
afford.  I knew he had a wide knowledge of jazz, but it was a long time
before I found that he knew Comte Ory as well as Kid Ory, the red priest of
Venice as well as Thelonious Monk, and so on.  There were quite a few works
I know and love that I can trace back to a gentle suggestion, "I think you
might like this," but I remember two in particular.  A sale copy of The
Rite of Spring caught my attention, not because I knew anything of it, but
because it had a spectacularly hideous cover.  Dennis played the whole
thing and I bought it, attracted by its power.  It took a long time to
learn to love its other qualities, but I did.  Then, when I heard just the
last movement of Mahler 1 on the radio and went to Dennis to find out more,
I walked out with the 2nd by Klemperer.  This was not salesmanship, this
was a guy who loved music and shared it with others.  Unfortunately, such
people are not all that easy to find face to face, which is the raison
d'etre for MCML.

Richard Pennycuick
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