Soon there’ll be little need to leave one’s house given the vast proliferation of websites offering music – both to listen to and to watch. Now another major player has entered the fray: the London Philharmonic Orchestra. The LPO was among the second wave of orchestras with its own label, but now – having undertaken trials earlier in the year – it takes the lead in offering a selection of its 2010-11 season’s concerts to “listen again”. The season opener, under the orchestra’s principal conductor Vladimir Jurowski, was the first concert to be made available (at 256kbps, and streamed internationally) and six concerts will be posted over the course of the season.

The next concert on offer is the one on October 27 and will be available to listen to about a week later. Jurowski again conducts and the programme falls into the LPO’s Mahler Anniversary series – Mahler’s Fifth Symphony and Kindertotenlieder (with Sarah Connolly) and Brahms’s Third Symphony. Sign up for alerts at lpo.org.uk/listenagain.

One of the many musical phenomena that captured people’s imagination on YouTube was the creation by the composer Eric Whitacre of the “Virtual Choir”. Budding choristers all over the world were encouraged to “join in” and create a vast cyber-choir. Whitacre, whose mellifluous and very appealing music was revealed to many people thanks to the Hyperion album “Cloudburst” (which incidentally is one of the 30 chosen to mark the company’s 30th anniversary), has now moved to Decca and to coincide with his first disc for the company, “Light & Gold”, has launched a bid to create the world’s largest virtual choir. To take part simply log on to YouTube (youtube.com/EricWhitacresVrtlChr), download the music and follow Eric Whitacre’s beat as he conducts just for you while you record your contribution. Then everything will be stitched together, presumably mixed, and you will be part of the huge performance of Whitacre’s iconic Sleep.

Among the handful of websites devoted to mining the archives, Paul Terry’s Historic Recordings regularly unearths some treasures and the site’s latest release is no exception. Of the latest 10, a clutch of programmes featuring American ensembles struck me as particularly appealing. There’s a programme that finds Artur Rodziński conducting the Chicago Symphony in music by Richard Strauss (Also sprach Zarathustra), Mendelssohn (Symphony No 3, Scottish) and Wagner (Tristan und Isolde – Act 3 Prelude). Rodziński is one of the conductors whose reputation is in real risk of disappearing off the radar. During his career he headed no fewer than four major American ensembles – the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Los Angeles PO and the New York Philharmonic – and his standards were very high indeed (and I’m sorry to learn that the rumour that he conducted with a loaded revolver in his pocket – such was his paranoia about his players’ antipathy – is apparently not true!). What is true though is that he was engaged by Toscanini to prepare the NBC Symphony Orchestra for the Maestro’s arrival – and that says much about his reputation as an orchestral trainer.

The Cleveland Orchestra features among the new releases: an intriguing programme conducted by Nikolai Sokoloff that couples Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture with Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony (cut, of course, but, from 1928, the work’s first recording). Eugene Goossens’s tenure in Cincinnati is represented by a nicely balanced collection that includes Schumann’s Fourth Symphony, Grieg’s First Peer Gynt Suite, Delius’s Walk to the Paradise Garden, Stravinsky’s Le chant du rossignol and Chabrier’s Marche joyeuse. And Eugene Ormandy’s epic reign in Philadelphia is glimpsed relatively early (1947-53) in a trio of works by a composer for whom he had a great affinity and clearly great affection, Paul Hindemith. As well as his second (!) recording of the Mathis der Maler Symphony, the programme contains the Konzertmusik, Op 50, and the suite from the ballet Nobilissima visione. The site offers the recordings in a variety of formats – MP3, FLAC and some as CDs. You’ll find everything you need by visiting historic-recordings.co.uk. 

It’s no secret that iTunes is by far the biggest digital download store when it comes to classical music – and by a pretty huge margin. So a new guide (available both as an e-book or as a good old-fashioned book whose pages you turn) is worth considering to explain all the new features of iTunes 10, the latest software update. Take Control of iTunes 10 is by Kirk McElhearn, a journalist who writes for Macworld, among other publications. He covers everything from “How do I use the new Album List View in iTunes 10?”, “How do I control the sound quality when I import (rip) a music CD?” to “How do I share my iTunes library over a network?”, “What can I print with iTunes?” and “What’s the best way to deal with my huge music library?”. The e-book costs $10 (about £6.70) and the traditional book $21.98 (£14). Full information from takecontrolbooks.com/itunes

We opened the Gramophone Awards this year with an address by the UK managing director of Spotify, Jon Mitchell. It was a thought-provoking glimpse into a future that offers music lovers an almost infinite amount of listening without the increasingly troubling problem of diminishing storage space. I demonstrated it to a couple of visiting American friends and they were not only hugely impressed by the range of music on offer but also the speed with which Spotify finds it – it is virtually instantaneous. For £4.99 a month (less than the price of a couple of cups of coffee), you can have advert-free music 24/7, and I’m starting to use it all the time…

A word about one of the features on Gramophone’s newly launched Player (accessible at gramophone.co.uk). Each month we’ll mine the archive for a recording that has captured our imagination: it may be something unexpected from a musician well known for something else or it may simply be very classy musicianship from someone barely remembered. So if you’ve a favourite recording from the distant past that you’d like to share, just drop us an email at gramophone.player@haymarket.com and we’ll see what we can do!

The Essential Download Playlist No 37 - Gerald Finley

Bach Cantatas Nos 26, 61 & 140 Harnoncourt (dhm) IT

Bach Cantatas Vol 19 Gardiner (SDG) CS, eM

Barber Songs Drake (Hyperion) H

Brahms  Ein deutsches Requiem Herreweghe (Harmonia Mundi) IT, eM
   

Britten War Requiem Masur (LPO) IT, eM

Haydn The Creation Gardiner (Archiv) DG, iT

Stanford Songs of the Sea Hickox (Chandos) CS, eM, CO

Verdi Otello C Davis (LSO Live) iT, eM   

Great Operatic Arias 22 Gardner (Chandos) CS, eM, CO

Live at Wigmore Hall Drake (Wigmore Hall Live) CS, eM, iT     
               
H = Hyperion  CS = Classical Shop eM = eMusic CO = ClassicsOnline DG = DG Webshop  iT = ITunes