On the road again, I am endlessly thrilled with Mike Richter's CD-ROM
music archives, especially in sparsely populated, isolated, spectacular
mountain regions of western Ireland.  Here, among color-coded, untended
sheep, and beyond the reach of the country's wonderful classical-music
radio service, it's Richter or nothing.

Once, not long ago, these discs of compressed files required computers
for listening, but now there are dozens of MP3-enabled portable CD players
on the market - "do not leave home without it."

These compendia of musical treasures provide inexpensive listening of
unlimited hours, easily covering the flight time of circling the globe
several times.  Additionally, playing RichterDiscs on a portable CD has
an apparent glitch, which turns into a "feature."

Perhaps portable CDs will soon have a far more extensive display than
today, but until they do, traveling with these discs means a strictly
linear programming.  On a computer, Mike's menus organize the material,
so you can follow the selections in a logical and preferential way:
listening to acts in sequence or sampling singers you know and/or are
interested to hear.

On a CD, the sequence is dictated by the file names, and although you
can certainly skip ahead, you "must listen" to A - B - C or 1 - 2 - 3.
That may be no big deal when you have "Boheme-1," "Boheme-2" and "Boheme-3,"
but you'll be amazed what an unusual experience it will be hearing the
"Ring" in order of file names...:)

But what's the good in this?  First, this will force new experiences on
the listener, such as on a (still under-construction) disc of Hungarian
opera, I don't get to pick and choose only what I want to hear, they
come up one after another.  So instead of repeating Reti and Szekely
performances, I must "suffer through" and thus discover singers I either
didn't know or have developed a healthy dislike for before.  I actually
ended up liking an aria sung by the much (and justly) maligned Simandy.

A related second positive aspect of flying semi-blind is that without
the program menu up on the screen, the experience can turn into a
fascinating quiz. On Mike's collections of his Webpages, there is no
opera expert in the world for whom the singers - and sometimes even the
work - would not present a puzzle as some 800 files go by, in a parade
determined only by their mechanical sequence.

In addition to all his other accomplishments, Mike has also developed
something "before its time," technology is just catching up with him,
although the recording companies still don't.  I guess Naxos could become
the first major distributor of classical music on CD-ROMs, about a decade
after Mike started the Archives.  Or maybe not.  Naxos is certainly
decent enough, especially in comparison with most of its competition,
but it *is* a business.  For Mike, there is no such commercial constraint.
He came to do good and ended up doing well...  in satisfaction, at least,
one hopes.

Don't know about the Archives? You can look it up, you know:

   http://www.mrichter.com.

Janos Gereben/SF
(In Wexford, 10/20-22, London, 10/23-27)
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