“Sometimes you cannot tell, even by inspecting micro-images of CD boxes or LP jackets, who the performers are—because, evidently, classical performers are not exactly human—and who cares who they are anyway? Weirdos doing crossword puzzles? Even the most basic facts about where, when and how a performance took place and a recording was made are often unobtainable. The gaps in the online collections are bizarre. Spotify has lots of unimportant recordings by the great cellist Steven Isserlis; lots of recordings of the Brahms cello sonatas, many of them copies of Yo-Yo Ma or Jacqueline du Pré versions. (Evidently, some elderly person flicking cigar ash once told the guys running the operation, “Those two are box office!” and they have never forgotten it.) But there is no copy of the Isserlis Brahms sonatas with the pianist Peter Evans, which is the best recording by far. I suppose this is some sort of joke, Internet humor. It is nonetheless drunk-makingly wonderful to be able to summon a dozen performances of a Beethoven bagatelle or Mozart violin sonata at the drop of a hat. It is a revolution; we only need to finish it. How do we turn these digital services into tools to educate our children? We use existing services to teach music at the simplest level and to build a grand musical marketplace in the cybersphere. We need to rearrange the music world, make it easier for anyone to learn or teach or perform or just keep up-to-date. It would be simple to put together music-learning packages that are independent of iTunes or Spotify, that merely link to those sites or others. We create a flock of 10-minute programs and have first-graders listen to each one repeatedly. ”
