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