ArkivMusic.eu is launching its European website, available for UK customers, on September 1. The online classical retailer will offer an extensive range of classical titles on CD, DVD, SACD and Blu-ray Disc.

Working with its American sister organisation, the leading online classical music retailer in North America, Arkivmusic.eu provides easy access to a large range of classical music titles with a unique and comprehensible search system allowing you to search within a wide range of criteria.

The new European website caters for six languages (English, German, French, Spanish, Dutch and Italian) offering the possibility of paying in all the major currencies. ArkivMusic.eu also includes a team of music specialists who are happy to search for hard-to-find products, respond to any musical questions and help with recommendations.

With a database of every recording artist and a library of over 70,000 titles, you can easily find, say, the 243 listed recordings of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. Many recordings can also be listened to before purchase.

Theodoor Lap, president of the website and a well-established figure in the classical music industry, has recognised the changing retail environment as many record shops progressively become extinct, yet realises that there is a strong demand for classical music within Europe.

The website offers notable reductions and an additional 10 per cent discount on the first order for Gramophone readers when registering as a customer at ArchivMusic.eu.

To mark the launch of Arkivmusic.eu, Gramophone has teamed up with the online retailer and compiled a series of classical essentials lists. Check out our recommendations, drawn from the forthcoming Gramophone Classical Music Guide 2012, for the essential Orchestral, Chamber, Instrumental, Vocal and Choral, and Opera recordings.