The first half of 2010 is going to see a rush of digital store launches and relaunches: people realising that their Version 1 needed some attention and others, sensibly having waited to survey the field, trying their hand. There will inevitably be winners and losers but music fans have most to win and the least to lose. First revamp comes from Passionato (passionato.com), a site dedicated entirely to classical music and offering a mix of major and independent company recordings. Passionato’s philosophy of presenting as much information as possible remains unchanged – I’m still not convinced of the need to know exactly which sub-label of each company all the music comes from (that strikes me as a bit CD-focused), but it demonstrates a care and feeling for the recordings that can’t be bad. There’s now an enhanced search option by which you can “drill down” by genre within a period or composer and narrow down your search. Useful if you’ve a very specific field of interest that you want to explore in detail. And there’s a lot of information clumped around the main composers (drawn from the All Music Guide). The list of labels available from Passionato is pretty comprehensive: the only major omissions at the moment are Warner and Sony (and on the indie front Hyperion – but then they have their own newly opened store, and very excellent it is too), but those two majors are still sorting out their digital distribution. Representation from the Universal labels (DG, Decca and Philips) and EMI is good, with quite a lot of music available here that is no longer on CD. The biggest change since the first version of Passionato is that they have abandoned their bespoke media player – probably a very sensible thing to do as it requires a staggering investment to get anywhere near the beautifully conceived and totally intuitive iTunes jukebox. Instead they’ve partnered with Media Monkey and use a tried-and-tested download manager-cum-library-cum-jukebox. Passionato now offers some very good guides (slightly hidden away at the bottom of the homepage), which are helpful if you’re confused about file types, downloading, storage and filing of your music or playback. As I’ve been exploring the site in its final stages of pre-preparation for relaunch I’ll hold off a full report until next month. But there’s plenty there that looks very encouraging. I mentioned the lack of Sony and Warner on Passionato, but for US music fans the good news is that Sony Classical has joined eMusic – and while it’s early days for full catalogue representation, do keep an eye open. I hope this initiative is replicated in other territories. And Klaus Heymann, Naxos’s founder and boss, tells me that quite soon he’ll have a lot of the majors on his Naxos Music Library. I can’t resist drawing your attention once again to the Naxos Music Library (naxosmusiclibrary.com), a staggering resource that at the time of writing has 39,991 albums available to stream (that’s 572,285 tracks). For a monthly subscription of $25 you can listen to as much music as you have time for, and the range is quite extraordinary. It’s also a great place to explore unusual repertoire before either buying the CD or downloading it. A quick glance through the labels available on the NML is pretty amazing. Here’s a very few picked at random: Albany, Alpha, Ambroisie, ATMA, Berlin Classics, BR-Klassik, Caprice, Chandos, Coro, CPO, Divox, Gimell, Kairos, LPO, Naïve, New Albion, Opera Rara, Profil, SDG, Signum, Timpani, Wigmore Hall Live…the list is very long, but that gives a pretty good idea of the range! Would that there were time to listen to all the music on offer. You can stream at various levels of quality from FM to CD, and even if you stream via your hi-fi you’re unlikely to be disappointed with the sound quality. For Naxos releases you can read the insert-notes as well. And if you’ve an iPhone or iPod Touch (or presumably an iPad) you can access the NML via an App from the iTunes store. A recently launched own-label download site well worth visiting if you’re interested in Danish music is Dacapo (dacapo-records.dk). Its website – cleanly designed and easy to navigate – offers downloads not only at 320kbps MP3, but also as 24-bit studio-quality FLAC or WMA files. I’ve been totally bowled over by the recent set of symphonies by Rued Langgaard (1893-1952), a composer who clung onto a late-Romantic language longer than most but who could explore a more modern style to extraordinary effect. He loathed Carl Nielsen’s music, believing he stood for everything that was wrong with modern music – a verdict it’s hard to understand. Dacapo’s pricing is in euros, so with the current punitive rate of exchange the high-quality downloads are quite expensive, but when things have calmed down a bit I’d recommend a visit. You can also get pretty well all the Langgaard/Dacapo recordings on both eMusic and Classicsonline.com – though only as MP3 files – so if you’re tempted to try them out, you can do so at modest cost. My current favourite Langgaard symphony is the Sixth, an intense one-movement work broken up into sections, opening with a double theme and variations. And with a disc of a cappella music by one of Denmark’s finest living composers, Poul Ruders, scheduled for release this month, there’s quite a variety of treats here, especially if contemporary music is your thing (actually, the Ruders discography on Dacapo is well worth exploring: the disc of his Concerto in Pieces, Violin Concerto No 1 and – admittedly quite tough – Monodrama is worth a sample). There’s also some strong competition here in the Baroque repertoire. March sees the 30th anniversary of Gimell, an own-label enterprise that – apart from a brief and evidently nightmarish flirtation with Philips – has steadfastly stuck to its guns and continued to produce beautiful recordings in superb sound. Long before symphony orchestras got wise to the idea of making their own discs and using them as international calling-cards, Peter Phillips’s Tallis Scholars were already there gathering a worldwide following. They’ve opened numerous doors to the world of Renaissance polyphony, and for that they deserve huge thanks. My download playlist this month is entirely devoted to The Tallis Scholars, and you can download many of these terrific recordings in 24-bit studio- quality sound. And believe me, they sound superb! In brief. Expect a Decca Web Shop (along the lines of DG’s) very soon – it’ll be quite something to have access to the deep recesses of that great label. More of that when it’s up and running. From Canada, Analekta, a label that has some fine artists in its roster, has promised a download store in the next few months. And Chandos’s theclassicalshop.net will reveal a face-lift soon too. The Essential Download Playlists No 32: Gimell at 30 Josquin Desprez Missa Pange lingua. Missa La sol fa re mi The Tallis Scholars Allegri Miserere Palestrina Missa Papae Marcelli The Tallis Scholars Gombert Magnificats 5-8 The Tallis Scholars Guerrero Missa Surge propera The Tallis Scholars White Tudor Church Music The Tallis Scholars Sheppard Media vita The Tallis Scholars Byrd The Three Masses The Tallis Scholars Tallis Spem in alium The Tallis Scholars Ockeghem Missa De plus en plus. Missa Au travail suis The Tallis Scholars Brumel Missa Et ecce terrae motus (The Earthquake Mass) The Tallis Scholars

James Jolly