On my site I have published a new list of new CD releases.
Please look at New releases
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Thank you for posting this very valuable information here on our community site. It must take a lot of work to issue these regularly. Most appreciated, and welcome to you.
In a supposed age of streaming, it is truly amazing how many CDs are
still released today. Additionally, prices of many very interesting
reissues are becoming trivial. I suspect that in a short time these may
disappear, so snap them up now. I bought a box of 15 CDs of Leonhardt
recordings for âŹ26.60, the only downside of which was that it came
without the copious notes of the separate CDs.
It would be interesting to see reviews of important recordings here on
/The Jackrail./
David
Hope everyone is safely ensconced in your home and well.
Is there a way to get a digest every morning of the previous dayâs posts? I really appreciated HPSCHD-List for making that service available.
Thank you,
Lenora
Re: David Pickettâs point â Brilliant Classics produced a number of recordings of French harpsichord composers. These are now available in a box set of 29 CDs, which I just bought. Several discs are devoted to Couperin, most of whose works I already owned. The others feature lesser-known composers â ClĂŠrambault, Chambonnières, Le Roux, etc. that I didnât have. Even discounting the Couperin discs, this was a good deal. (I also recommend the 35-CD set of Haydn symphonies by the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra; that was something like $1.50 a disc!)
To clarify, the set of 29 Brilliant Classics harpichord CDs are called simply âFrench Harpsichord Musicâ. Amazon.co.uk has it for about ÂŁ2 per CD, which at the current $ or ⏠rates of exchange is an amazing bargain.
David
Assuming that early (pre-monsterous) pianos fall under our rubric, I can
recommend the series of Dussekâs piano works being put out by Brilliant.
Itâs not a set - each CD has a different player, which in a way matches
the heterogeneity of Dussekâs own output. (In general, I find his early
sonatas to be very good, his late ones to be either very good or very
pedestrian, and his middle-period ones to be middling).
Administrative note: The software allows us to decide whether we want
quoted text to be included at the bottom of each message we receive or
not. I choose to; people who choose not to should see these stripped. I
havenât stripped these by hand. So this is a bit of an experiment.
Further administrative note: These preference can be changed by signing
on to the website https://jackrail.space then clicking on the
âyouâ icon at the upper right, then your username in the upper right of
the pop-up, then preference, then e-mails. Note that youâre configured
to receives email as messages get posted - this is like a traditional
mailing list. If you prefer, you can simulate a digest by unchecking
âmailing list modeâ and adjusting your preference under âActivity Summary.â
Iâm impressed with the flexibility and ease of use of all of this.
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Dussek is excellent. Patchy sure, but nevertheless. Looking at those releases on Brilliant Classics - and what an amazing selection of high quality music and performances, including composers that get less attention than they should - most of them are available on Spotify, and a lot of other services.
My house has not room for one more physical CD. I just canât fit in any more bookshelves. Being on Spotify is great. I am not advertising Spotify, but I highly commend it, and for a relatively small monthly fee it has more music than I will ever be able to take in, and the classical range is now vast. It has really blossomed. No longer merely pop music. Not only that, I can listen on my phone will the truly superb new Bose noise cancelling headphones while travelling on the tram and train (my own little keyboard bubble).
I would like to open the scope of our group to include discussion of Dussek, and other composers of that ilk, even Clementi, and the instruments they used. After all, many of the pieces have âFor Pianoforte or Harpsichordâ on the title cover page, even though thatâs probably a 19c marketing ploy that many composers or their publishers adopted to sell more copies.
So a +1 for Dussek. I hope the other moderators donât ban me. 
A couple of years ago I got fed up with CDs having playback issues. In general classical CDs are in the higher price range especially when compared to pop music so itâs pretty annoying when they stop working and/or if they are no longer for sale.
To solve this, I started digitizing my complete collection of around 1000 CDs to FLAC format (more info: https://www.cnet.com/news/what-is-flac-the-high-def-mp3-explained/). This allowed me to have a lossless copy of my collection and no longer do I fear having a CD âlost for eternityâ. The FLAC compression has no copyright and there are plenty of (free or cheap) programs out there which can compress/digitize your music.
Everything is stored on a NAS which is accessible from my receiver. Joy all around 
Regards,
Chris.
Presto Classical has a vast catalogue of CDâs and for a large number now MP3 and FLAC. The standard resolution FLAC is cheaper than the CD, but the high resolution is usually a lot more. FLAC being a lossless compression scheme is so much better than MP3. [Now thatâs a whole other topic.]
All those nice Dussek records are at Presto too.
Presto Classical also has a sheet music division. Iâve ordered several things from them, and their shipping costs are reasonable.
There are a couple of streaming sources that I subscribe to that feed directly via an Ethernet connection into the music streamer in my stereo system. These are Tidal and Qobuz. There is a monthly fee for these, depending on the resolution you want. If you have to choose only one, I would pick Qobuz, because they have more high resolution files, but unless you have a high end stereo system, that may not matter to you. The selection on Qobuz is slightly more comprehensive, but not by much, and for many albums, Qobuz provides the liner notes. Tidal does not. Almost everything you might want is available on one or the other. The only major label that doesnât stream on either service is Hyperion.
Agreed. I recently ordered some scores and they came beautifully protected in packaging, the ship costs to Australia were very reasonable, and they came much quicker than expected. So thatâs a +1.
Hello everyone,
A quick comment, partly to test the new systemâŚ
Personally, I do still miss CDs as physical objects partly because of the booklets and texts that went with them. The new on-line services are fine if we assume musicians and music are all completely self-explanatory and there is no need for sleeve notes, texts and translations, information about the instruments and the tuning, or even information about when the recording was made. Yes, those can often be downloadedâbut not alwaysâŚ
Also CDs more often represented a listening experience with a longer attention span than the three-minute attention span for most âsongsâ. There is a greater tendency now for listeners not to understand the concept of âmovementâ within a larger work, or that part of the expressive force of a sarabande comes from its being surrounded by a Courante and a Gigue, for example⌠And the idea that Bachâs Matthew Passion has over 70 movements seems totally barbaric to many younger listeners.
This is not to deny the real advantages, from some points of view, of the on-line systems. But among those advantages is certainly not any improvement in the ability of musicians to earn income from their efforts!
Best wishes,
DM
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