Eugene David<br>...The One-Minute Pundit

Posted 5:25 PM by Gene

Terry Teachout ponders the rotting carcass of the classical-record biz:

The New York Times led off its annual list of notable classical recordings of the year with this determinedly optimistic passage:

The year brought more talk of doom and gloom for the classical recording industry, or at least its CD wing. Yet recordings continue to stream out from new sources as well as from major labels in retrenchment or recovery. And many of them are truly excellent.
That is not what I call encouraging, and neither is the list. Except for the reissues—which include such familiar, regularly recycled fare as Wanda Landowska’s Bach recordings—I haven't heard anything on it. What’s more, only one of the new recordings, a soon-to-be-released live performance by the late, lamented Lorraine Hunt Lieberson of her husband Peter’s Neruda Songs, piqued my interest in the slightest. A Beethoven symphony cycle by Bernard Haitink? An original-instrument Eine kleine Nachtmusik? Krystian Zimerman’s second recording of the Brahms D Minor Concerto? Still more John Adams and Philip Glass?

As this time of year we encounter a profusion of top-ten cultural lists -- a guaranteed way news hacks can avoid having to think -- couldn't the same be said of the film biz, where the ad-blurbists post copious examples of the superb arthouse flicks hardly anyone outside the Manhattan circuit bothers to see? Or the pop-sound trade, one DOA act after another that cannot be brought to life with words like genius? Or the reverse snobbery of the TV lists, full of their high-toned Perils of Pauline? No, it's not just the classical-record biz that's in a funk.