Bob Kasenchak and others have made me realise that I erred in saying:

>>It occurs to me that younger members of the list - say <35 - probably
>>don't own any LPs, or a turntable.


I assumed that as CDs have been around for about 15 years, then those who
had bought a system in the intervening period would probably have been at
least 20 when they did so, hence 35.

I also wrote:

>>They assume perhaps that the cornucopia of music we take for granted is
>>a common experience for all of us.

and Bob asked:

>Can you say more about this? I don't exactly understand but I sense you're
>saying something interesting.

I hope to be interesting, Bob!  That was partly the reason I mentioned
the Bruckner-loving postman and the single version of Mahler's 8th, to
illustrate the limited options that were available to the CM nut way back
when.  During the 60s and especially the 70s when I really let fly with
purchases, there were the beginnings of the cheaper reissues and such
labels as Supraphon and Turnabout which allowed you to take the plunge
and check out a Hummel piano concerto, a Martinu violin concerto or a
Fibich symphony without finding you'd shelled out a fortune on a lemon.
It also meant that even today, the Czechs are among my favourite composers -
whoever ran Supraphon back then knew the value of marketing a good product
at a good price.  To digress, I recently got a Supraphon CD of Schulhoff
symphonies almost a year after I ordered it.

Without doing a potted history of the CD era, in its early stages, what
was on offer was standard repertoire.  What amazed me and, I imagine, many
other listers, was the fact that so much music that had never been recorded
before was being released on an ever-increasing variety of labels, and the
speed with which this phenomenon asserted itself.  We now have a staggering
array of music available to us but it was not always thus.  Nothing very
deep there, I'm afraid, Bob, but I hope that answers your question.

Increasingly, it seems to me that the major labels are recording the same
repertoire over and over again with the same jetsetters performing it and
we're expected to pay top dollar for it.  The smaller labels - if Naxos or
Chandos, for example, can still be so called - are recording what I want.
The big labels are reissuing their old recordings and letting you have
at least twice as much music for less than the price of a new CD, so I'm
buying their reissues as well.  It makes no sense to me but I don't pretend
to understand economics.

None of this post is new and most of us have read or thought it all before.
If you've got this far, my apologies!

Richard Pennycuick
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