# Once Upon the Internet - Schubert for two pianists, four hands



## itywltmt

En français

The (classical) music legacy of MP3.COM








*Mp3.com*, co-founded in November 1997 by Michael Robertson and Greg Flores is a historically significant URL for *indie artists*, who in the site's heyday provided most of its content. From its beginning to when Vivendi took over and eventually evicted the indies, it was a once ever _mecca _for unsigned bands and solo acts. Now that pie is divided up into many many other varieties of music sites but for over 3 years, pretty much every artist who had music on mp3 files could be found in the same place and had the web address *www.mp3.com/name-of-act*.

For a time it looked like this continent of new artists would indeed change the music business but several factors came about to stall the momentum of mp3.com. *Napster *became more and more popular and since free songfiles of name artists started to "become available", a fair amount of the mp3.com audience migrated there.

Still, for those artists who were present, nothing has ever matched the original mp3.com for that initial explosion of creativity (with many talents who could hold their own in the mainstream), and that world within a world of intense public scandals, raw emotion, and virtual stardom.

Artists provided 4 days (96 hours) of audio content per day from Summer 1999 to Summer of 2003. At its peak, MP3.com delivered over* 4 million MP3 formatted audio files per day* to over 800,000 unique users on a customer base of 25 million registered users. This was about 4 terabytes of data delivery per month from three data centers.

During those 4 years (1999-2003), I myself took part in the downloading experiment, my initial foray into this new forum, as MP3.COM proposed the work of several classical music artists, both established and new. Additionally, some independent record labels (Eroica Classical Recordings for one - http://www.eroica.com/artists.html)

Weakened financially, MP3.com was eventually acquired by Vivendi Universal in May 2001. Vivendi had difficulties growing the service and eventually dismantled the original site, selling off all of its assets including the URL and logo to CNET in 2003.

As I have done off-and-on with some of the downloads I have made from Public Domain Classic, I thought I would also use the Internet Archive to help preserve these downloads, some of them being "entire recordings", and others being groupings of downloads that share a common thread (composer or artist). On a monthly basis on PTB, I will highlight one such archived set.

About the artists

The occasional pairing of Austrian pianists *Paul Badura-Skoda* and *Jörg Demus* has resulted on a number of recordings in the 50's and as late as a few years ago, notably of *Schubert *and *Mozart*'s works for piano 4-hands.

Both pianists are born in the 1920's, and are recognized as being specialists of late classical to late romantic/early contemporary repertoires, having collaborated as performers and as authors (co-authoring analyses of the Beethoven sonatas, for example). Accomplished soloists in their own right, their unique insight in the late classical composers makes their Schubert stand out - and I personally have enjoyed these "in performance" recordings of these familiar works.

Here is a performance by the duo, from five years ago, performing one of the works featured in this week's playlist:






*PLAYLIST DETAILS​*
*Franz SCHUBERT (1797 - 1828)*

*Three Military Marches for piano duo, D. 733*

No. 1 (D Major) 
No. 2 (G Major) 
No. 3 (B Flat Major)
*Rondo in D Major for piano duo, D. 608 
Rondo in A Major for piano duo, D. 951 
Eight variations on an original theme, in A Flat Major, for piano duo, D. 813 
Fantasy in F Major for piano duo, D. 940 *

Performed by Paul Badura-Skoda and Jörg Demus, pianists
(Recorded in performance, Milan 1978)
Downloaded from MP3.COM on 23 November, 2001

Playlist URL: http://archive.org/details/SchubertPicesPourPianoQuatreMains

*June 8 , 2012, "I Think You Will Love This Music Too" will be adding a new montage "7 & 11" to its Pod-O-Matic Podcast. Read our English and French commentaries June 8 on the ITYWLTMT Blogspot blog.*


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