# Art-music CD shops- Last of the Mohicans



## Chi_townPhilly (Apr 21, 2007)

Having earlier spotted *Elgarian*'s thread concerning Bath Compact Discs, and *CreamCat*'s lament concerning the closing of yet another shop for fine music, I thought it would be interesting to dedicate a thread to the "bricks-and-mortar" shops that are bucking the trend, so far, and "stayin' alive" in spite of all the pressures they're currently experiencing.

Now, like many (if not most) of the posters here, I do most of my purchasing via on-line sources, and am grateful for the variety and price that they offer.

Having said _that_, I'm just old-fashioned enough to enjoy a good browse in a well-stocked Classical department, and typically leave somewhat poorer in the wallet but richer in fine music for the experience.

Now, please give a shout-out to those shops that you feel deserve a special mention... 
before it's "last call," and we have virtually none of 'em, anymore... ()


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## StlukesguildOhio (Dec 25, 2006)

The great old book stores and record stores were great... and I sorely miss them in many ways. When I first fell under the spell of classical music I read everything I could lay my hands on (mostly from the library) and I remember having come upon histories written of Schubert's great song cycles... and yet I couldn't find recordings of his lieder anywhere. Finally... during a visit to Chicago I discovered a record store with an entire floor devoted to classical music and another to jazz. I was in heaven... but also hell... being the poor art student with very little cash in pocket I felt as if I were just being teased. I did, however, purchase one recording (on cassette tape) of Kurt Moll performing _Die Winterreise_. From that point I was hooked upon Schubert... upon classical vocal music in general.

Years later DG and EMI began re-releasing the classic lieder recordings of Schumann and Schubert with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Hans Hotter, Elizabeth Schwarzkopf and others. By this time I was a gainfully employed artist and able to buy a goodly number of discs every two weeks. This went on for some time... until perhaps a couple of years ago when I began to find it difficult to find anything I desired... even in the music departments of the big book stores such as Borders and Barnes and Nobles. At first I assumed this was because I had reached a certain saturation level where I could no longer find something I didn't already have... but this was not the reality. Music stores and music departments were dying as a result of downloading and internet sales. I began to notice that every few months the music department shrank a bit... and the selection shrank as well... until soon I was afforded perhaps one or two options for even the most popular works (Beethoven's 5th) and nothing by the more obscure.

I greatly enjoy the ease... the variety... and the prices of purchasing music online... from the comfort of my own home. My music collection has greatly blossomed... expanded with great composers who are not everyday names... and with modern and contemporary composers I had never heard of before. Still I must admit I miss the bi-weekly ritual of going out to a good dinner and then spending the next hour or two browsing the racks for new music which I would then rush home to listen to. Life, however, goes on... and we all must deal with "progress".


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## Polednice (Sep 13, 2009)

I'm very much an online music buyer, being of a younger generation than others here, but I'm very lucky to be in Oxford half of my time because I have access to the Blackwell's Music Shop - it's amaaaaaaazing! Floors and floors of classical music and jazz/world _etc._, not to mention a huge supply of books on the subject as well as sheet music. *Happiness*


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## David58117 (Nov 5, 2009)

Although not strictly a classical music shop - I LOVE browsing our local well stocked used cd shop - "CD Exchange." 

My last visit there I got all of these for $23 USD total:

Mahler: Symphony No. 9 (Karajan)
Saint Saens: Piano Concertos 1-5 ( Collard - Previn)
Nielsen: Symphonies Nos. 1-4 (Blomstedt)
Schubert: Death and the Maiden (Quartetto Italiano) 

Most of the locations don't have much of a selection (maybe 70 or so CDs), but I happened to find one that has about 1,000 used classical music CD's - I love that place!


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## Fsharpmajor (Dec 14, 2008)

Polednice said:


> I'm very lucky to be in Oxford half of my time because I have access to the Blackwell's Music Shop - it's amaaaaaaazing! Floors and floors of classical music and jazz/world _etc._, not to mention a huge supply of books on the subject as well as sheet music. *Happiness*


I love that shop. I spend at least an hour there every Saturday. Besides the things Polednice mentions, they have a full-time customer service desk where you can order or reserve CDs, ask questions, look up reviews in the Penguin and Gramophone guides, etc.

They also have a reward card which is well worth getting if you shop there regularly. I used mine for a few months without registering it, and when I finally got around to it I found that I had £15.00 credit on it.


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## Chi_townPhilly (Apr 21, 2007)

StlukesguildOhio said:


> Finally... during a visit to Chicago I discovered a record store with an entire floor devoted to classical music and another to jazz.


One could safely conclude that I, your humble dilettante, had more than a little familiarity with that location...

I'd like to make special mention of two places that I try to frequent. First, I attempt to work in a visit to 
*J&R Music World* during any visit to New York City. A visit to their Classical section is like a journey to a different era- oh, say about 20+ years ago, when we all expected a major metropolitan recorded-music shop to have a Classical section of such dimensions. It's not a dedicated floor- but it's two pretty good-sized rooms: one for instrumental music, the other for music with a vocal emphasis (with particular focus on opera).

Secondly, the old-Ivy-town of Princeton, New Jersey has the *Princeton Record Exchange.* As the name might suggest, they cater more to the slightly-used end of CD-offerings. Also, like the famous bookstore "The Strand" in New York, the somewhat improvisational stocking presentation means you have to work for what you get. Still, they were featured at the top-of-the-list for CD-shops in the U.S. in an _Esquire_ magazine feature. In that piece, one of the co-owners expressed enough confidence in their business model to say something like if there are only 5 CD-shops left in America, they expect they'll be one of them.


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

I'm actually a dinosaur compared to others, I still buy my cd's physically from stores here in Sydney. I don't trust shopping online.

In Sydney, there's a chain of cd shops called *Fish Records* that have two stores devoted entirely to classical (there used to be three, but one closed). Their other generalist non-classical branches also have pretty good classical & jazz sections. There's another shop called *Michael's Music Room * which is also devoted entirely to classical cd's/dvd's. I'm surprised at how even some smaller generalist cd shops have a resonable classical section, even if it's just devoted to one label (eg. Naxos), they still often have the latest releases.

I don't own a computer or an ipod, but if I end up getting these, I would probably download stuff as well. I'm just beginning to think that the cd's I've been collecting over the past 18 months are too many (roughly 200), I don't want to let it get out of hand. I live by the philosophy "less is more" so maybe owning so many cd's is a contradiction. I want to actually listen to the cd's, not just have them as kind of trophies. That's stupid, IMO, owning a whole lot of cd's and hardly listening to them.

I'm not fixated on getting only composers or works that I'm guaranteed to love at first hearing, I'm more flexible. That's why I like to physically browse the shelves of the shops, and even what they have on the bargain table. Like recently from there I got a Nimbus recording of Bernstein's _Kaddish Symphony_ & other works by Weill & Schoenberg which I really like, & probably wouldn't have known about had I not seen it in the shop.


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