Hi,

So I live in the States since a few years now, and I haven't found a single US piano magazine.
I subscribe the UK "Pianist magazine" (which I love), but most (all?) of the CD reviews are for European labels/artists. They review some great CDs, but buying import in the USA cost you about $20/CD. And no, I am not interested in downloading mp3 versions of the CD.
So I am wondering, how do you guys hear about great new CDs?
Where do you get reviews about newly released CDs? (I know reviews are most of the time subjective, but that can still help).

arkivmusic.com is my source. If you sign up for weekly emails, each email has links to several featured CDs and reviews of them by people who write for classicstoday. They're not always piano music, and I enjoy getting recommendations to widen my taste as well as the piano oriented reviews. The webpage itself has a very easy to navigate organization system, with the greatest amount of selection of any CD website I know. Most importantly, a large number of "highly rated" CDs have their classicstoday review accompanying them.

I also sometimes go to Amazon and read the user reviews to get a more "people's eye view" of the CD. Some comments are worthless, while other comments are very informed and useful, and I find it's pretty easy to tell which is which.

I don't know about reviews, but some US labels to look at:

http://www.centaurrecords.com/

http://www.albanyrecords.com/

And a lot of US artists are self-releasing albums using cdbaby.com

For many years I subscribed to Gramophone magazine, and I almost always based my CD purchases on the recommendations in that publication. What I particularly liked about it were the comparisons with newly-reviewed CDs with previous issues of the same material. I felt that those reviews helped me make intelligent choices, and I also appreciated the fine writing style of most of their contributors.

While many articles and some reviews seemed to be Euro-centric, the selections reviewed covered so many labels that there was always a choice for the US purchaser.

Those were the days, too, when places such as Sam Goody and Tower Records Classical were havens for browsing through thousands of late-released and older CDs. Yes, those were the days.

Regards,

A US label not to be overlook is Reference Recordings
Reference

whose "mission" is to assure that "how a recording sounds is as important as the music itself." To this end, their production of sometimes out-of-the-mainstream repertoire is geared to providing the highest technical audiophile recordings the industry can produce. They have some absolutely stunning CDs in their relatively small - but growing - catalog.

(Full disclosure - I have no association with Reference Recordings. I have purchased some of them and I am impressed with the quality.)

Regards,

I want to second this. Amazon is my main source for finding new CD's. It is indeed easy to distinguish the useful reviews from the worthless reviews. There are often reviews from professional critics for the CD's. Also, they (usually) offer 30 second samples of each track, so you can often form your own impression of the music. Lastly, there are links to related CD's you may like. I usually find these worthless, but occasionally I find a real gem amongst these links.

As a musical theatre fan that loves to listen to familiar cast recordings in other languages, I find myself buying CDs online a lot. Sometimes Amazon will have them listed and you can click on "Available from these sellers". If that doesn't work, there's always the German, French, or UK Amazon. It's in pounds or euros, shipping is expensive, and it can take a long time, but what's my other choice?

Speaking as someone from an older generation, I've built and rebuilt my collection over several decades.

It started in the late 1970s with the purchase of LPs. It sometimes took weeks for me to save up enough allowance money to buy the records I wanted. I also found some 78RPM records in my grandmother's basement which I transferred to cassette tape by placing a microphone in front of a speaker.

By the early 80s, I was working at a classical record store and used my employee discount for my record collection - many of which I still have although I seldom play them.

In 1986, I bought my first CD player and started buying CDs. In 1987, Tower Records in Boston opened and I began going there every few weeks and blowing money I could scarcely afford on CDs. Sometimes I bought indiscriminately and by 1990, had a large collection of CDs that I never listened to. I sorted those out, hauled them down to Boston, and sold them at a second hand shop - this was long before E-Bay, of course. But that began an annual tradition of going through my entire CD collection and sorting out those items which no longer interested me.

With the advent of the Internet, music buying has never been easier, but it has had the negative effect of draining business from brick & mortar stores. I generally rely on Amazon, but if something's not easily obtainable, I check Arkivmusic. I also avail myself of the public library's interlibrary loan system - I can get any CD from almost any library in Ohio - which has made previewing recordings easier.

I'd second (or third) the suggestion of purchasing from Amazon. Their prices change frequently, but you'll occasionally find a really good deal there if you know what you're looking for. Just as an example, the wonderful 11CD Artur Rubinstein Chopin collection is about $30 there right now. I bought it for about $50 a few years ago, and even then I thought it was a steal.

I've even had good luck purchasing used CDs from sellers that list on Amazon.

I don't have anything to add as far as finding/reading reviews of new releases, but once you know what you're looking for, you can get pretty good deals from Amazon. And while the comments there can occasionally descend to the YouTube level, their system generally does a decent job of making the many useful reviews easy to find.

Does anyone keep track of the CDs they have, say in a database? I used to have it "all in my head" until I recently bought a CD that I already had! The problem is there are so many CDs and it would be a project to enter the details in a database.. but I think it would be great, especially for those CDs you do not listen to often, eg string quartets or violin/cello repertoire in my case..
I am also reluctant to have everything in mp3 although that would come with an automatic databse. But then I woudl have to upload my whole CD collection...

How do you guys handle this "problem"??

I'm sure that all computer geeks, nerds, programmers and experts - as well as archivists and librarians and even a few amateurs, including myself - will laugh at my "system" and its gross inefficiency, but it started long before there were easy-use data bases and has grown to a point where I don't have the time nor the inclination to put it all in a data base now.

When I got my first CDs, starting in 1983, I began cataloguing them in a WordPerfect document, cross-referencing them by composer and performer(s). That eventually became 26 WordPerfect documents, one for each letter of the alphabet, which turned into 52 Word documents [1] : 26 (one for each letter of the alphabet) = composers, and 26 (one for each letter of the alphabet) = artists. I don't have the search functions of a data base; I can only look up my catalogue under composer or artist, but at least I know where to find a work or an artist among my 1700+ CDs. Since most of my CDs are of classical music and since the large majority of them has only one composer on each CD, I store them alphabetically by composer for quick locating. Occasionally, I forget that Moeran's "Lonely Waters" is on a CD with compositions by Bax, Bridge, and Butterworth and is (probably) filed under B - somewhere; at least that limits the locations I have to search.

At one point, I even printed out a hard copy of my two catalogues - which were "catalogs" then, as I was living in the US! - but that project became a wasteful paper-eater. With 26 pages of Composers-B, at one point, the insertion of another work of Bach on page 4, meant that all subsequent pages had to be re-printed. I still have a print copy of a few years ago, but updates to the "system" remain on my computer.

[1] Conversion was no piece of cake!

Regards,

Whenever I get a new CD, I do upload it in mp3. I do find that I learn and appreciate the music more if I wait a while before I upload it, so that I'm forced to listen to all of the tracks from the CD enough to learn them. Otherwise, the new ones remain obscure as they are added to the thousands I already have in mp3. However, despite the resultant audio compression etc, with my busy lifestyle, I do a lot of my listening while I'm walking from one place to another or while I'm on my feet at work. Thus an mp3 player is the most reasonable option. And of course, as you already mentioned Andromaque, since I always have my computer or my player with me, I can pull it out if I'm in a CD store and check to be sure I'm not making a repeat purchase.

Ouch Bruce D! Word Perfect!! :DYour system is cumbersome but it is definitely much more advantageous than no system at all.
You know it is easy to convert word documents into excel and then into a more sophisticated database, esepcially if you had your entries tabbed or separated by commas etc..
But if it works for you, why bother..
I am contemplating the idea of hiring a student to enter the CDs in a database this summer, except that I would not want the student in my apartment when I am there and I don't think it would be appropriate to bring the CDs to work and have him do the entries on work premises, and he lives several train rides away so he can't take them home easily.. Ah!! C'est compliqué! Difficult problem!!

I generally just take chances. If I like it, I'll buy more of that performer. The recent Cliburn competition was a pretty good advertisement for several performers and I'll be looking forward to a Haochen Zheng CD when it comes. If it's good, I'll buy more. I have about 170 CD's (some I've converted from my vinyl collection)

Altrent,

If you subscribe to an Internet downloading service, you can listen to thousands of classical MP3's in their entirety, and decide which you want to buy on CD. I use Napster's subscription service for $15 per month. They don't have all classical labels, but certainly enough for me to happily browse and listen for hours, and buy my favorites on CD.

Disclaimer - I have not done this...

There are at least a couple of database software packages (I think quite inexpensive) designed specifically for this. AND, much of the data can be pulled directly from the internet, so you don't have to input everything from scratch. All you do is simply insert the CD in the drive on your computer, and the information automatically is found and downloaded into the database. I know that some of the data can be pretty sketchy or outright wrong, but it can easily be edited.

iTunes does this, and it's very helpful. Unfortunately, however, it only allows browsing by artist name, album, or genre (as it's understandably geared towards popular music), and not by composer or form. Additionally, one can only enter a single artist name per track - for example, only the pianist or the conductor or the orchestra, but not all three in separate fields. So it is easy for me to find in my collection, for example, concerto recordings by Andsnes or Richter, but not by the London Symphony Orchestra or Herbert von Karajan. This problem is trickier, for example, with a recording such as that of the Beethoven Triple Concerto by Richter, Rostropovich, and Oistrakh with Herbert von Karajan conducting - which one of these four great artists do I choose for organizational purposes? My solution was to put "Various Artists" in the "Artist" field, and then put the names of the performers in a "Comments" field - but the Comments field is not searchable.

I put the pianist in the artist field and the Orchestra in the comments. I haven't personally done this, but you can presumably make a "smart playlist" that will search the comment field for matches.

International Piano Magazine reviews tons of piano CD's in every issue. I'd guess they review 20-30 in each issue.

I have recently overhauled my archival and storage system for my over 1000 CD's--that represents over 10 years of buying far too many!!

For a short time I used a PDA to catalog my CD's by composer and, in some cases, by exceptional artists. Then when I finally had over 200 CD's the system became a little too cumbersome. I would pile up the CD's onto shelves 2 deep and 2 high and really lose what I had and where it was.

Whenever I wanted to find a particular CD I would spend too much time tracking down a particular one. It was like wandering through the open stacks of a giant library--a lot of fun but you might not find what you want.

So-o-o-o, my wife and kids were recently away for the weekend and I seized the opportunity to clean everything out. I took all the CD's and put them on the whole living room floor in alphabetical piles--this took 5 or 6 hours and it got fun as the space between the piles got smaller and smaller.

Then I got a bunch of large CD folder files with sleeves for the CD's and started to place them into the folders. The paper inserts I placed in smaller translucent boxes in almost the same order as the CD's, using a separate box for the inserts to match up to each separate CD folder.

Just getting rid of the jewel boxes has saved a tremendous amount of room and I can now peruse through the folders and see what CD I have and easily go to the insert if I want.

It was a little bit of a hassle but I now know what I have and where it is. By the way, I left a little room in each folder for any future acquisitions--I really almost buy no new CD's anymore, I am spending my time actually listening to what I have.

The whole experience is now a great pleasure, just like the time when I was 11 years old, had only 20 LP's and knew every groove on every record. I look forward to really learning and enjoying my collection.

Joseph
So now that you have a less space-occupying collection, how did you organize the folders? by composer? by instrument or genre? How do you navigate the new system?

Could you share the names of these DBs? Are they open-source?

I've dreaded to type in the details to the DB myself, plus the headache of designing the tables. If there're already existing suitable products, it would be a great relief.

My CDs are very precisely cataloged in an MS Access database. I began all the cumbersome data entry back when I still used a Windows computer, but now that I am a dedicated Mac user, I first put Windows in Virtual PC, then when I bought an Intel Mac I'm now able to run Windows more efficiently in Bootcamp.

Access has never been written for the Mac platform, but with the latest version of Office Pro (containing Access), it's easy to create a pdf of the database for convenient viewing in the Mac environment.

The advantage of Access, is that it is a relational database program. You can create a table for, say, CDs and performers, then another table for compositions. Link the two and you have a much more efficient working database without redundant information. This is why Excel would only work for small collections.

Filemaker Pro -written for both Windows and Mac- is also a relational database, but I found that converting the Access databases was more trouble than it was worth.

Of course one can just pull info from the internet, but it's never properly formatted for the Access tables. Even when I put a CD into iTunes, there's always a lot of reformatting. I'm very, very particular about these things.

Yeah Access would work fine, but it is all the typing one has to do.. I also get picky, wanting to enter as much info as possibe.. But I think I will get it done this summer in my not so ample free time..
But after you have entered all the CDs in a database, how do you organize them physically? Don't tell me you have them numbered in the databse a la Dewey Decimal System!!??

Non organ or choral CDs are arranged alphabetically by composer, and in cases where there is more than one composer represented, my database indicates which composer to look under. For example, a CD containing the Henselt and Moszkowski concertos, the database directs me to find it filed under Henselt.

Organ and choral CDs are another case entirely. I have a HUGE collection of this stuff, so choral and organ collections are filed by label and catalogue number (my database will tell me what label and number), then organ CDs devoted to one composer are then filed alphabetically, though separate from my non organ CDs.

It works very well, and if there is a particular Anglican anthem I wish to listen to, I have to consult the database, unless my memory -unreliable after a few drinks- is tip top.

If anyone here is more anal-retentive than I in cataloging their CDs, I would like to know!

All right. You are more neurotic than I am. And that is official!

Speaking of organs, a family member recently mentioned that he is planning a trip to Austria where he expects to play on a famous (?largest) Silbermann organ.. I don't remember where exactly. He says he needed to beg and plead with a whole chain of people to gain access.. how big a deal is it really to play one of these things?? (I will confess that beyond Cesar Franck, my knowledge of organs and their literature is fairly slim)..

I think Barnes and Noble has a pretty decent selection of classical cd's. At least in my area it does, anyone else find this where they are?

Matt

I found I only had a bookmark for one - Music Collector - which does pull information their own database plus from various Amazon.com sites too. And they have some special layout options for classical music. But I knew there were more, so I did a google search on "classical cd database software" and got quite a few hits. So you might try doing that search and see if anything turns up that suits your needs.

Use your Windows Media Player...just insert the CD click on the media player..finds the track listing titles automatically...it even found the info of Mp3 tracks from non paying sites (limewire) CD title(what CD the track came from) artist, composer, year, and CD cover!...

wr: thanks for the link, I'll check that out.

argerichfan: you are fortunately very disciplined. My dream is to digitize my whole collection. With a few clicks I can pull out all the tracks I want to listen and listen online, and maybe incorporating with IMSLP's free scores while listening.