DOWNLOADING MUSIC FROM THE ETHER James Jolly launches The Gramophone's monthly look at the world of downloads

Technology is developing at such a rate that we've now reached a point where it is virtually impossible to predict what might be just around the corner. Only a few years back we were still married to the concept that future developments in audio delivery would still appear in some kind of physical form. Yet, here we are at a time when one of the world's leading provider of downloads is claiming to handle over $1.4million of business each day! Unlike the CD, which was launched around classical music (the optimum length of a CD was determined by the length of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony), pop and rock music dominate in the download world. Even so, classical music's market share on iTunes (more anon) is substantially higher than through traditional outlets.

So, downloading has arrived and is clearly going to be an important strand in the future. For the classical aficionado, the greatest benefit is that the deletion axe could become a thing of the past. No longer will companies have to worry about manufacturing discs that they can't guarantee to sell immediately, no longer will discs sit around on dealers' shelves gathering dust. Rather they will sit in cyberspace waiting to be brought back to life at the request of the music lover.

The first point worth making before we get down to the actual music is that you don't need to become a consumer of music on the move. Your music can reside on the hard-drive of your PC and go no further than the speakers attached to that computer (and there are some pretty impressive set-ups for sale). Of course the idea of sitting at your desk listening to music may not appeal to everyone, but connecting your PC to your hi-fl (especially in these days of wireless delivery) is no longer unthinkable or unmanageable.

I'm an iPod user and so for the 'storage' of my music, I use the iTunes digital jukebox (not only for music I have downloaded from iTunes or ripped from CDs, but also from other download sites). It's a typically welldesigned piece of Apple software that, while clearly created for non-classical music, is adaptable and reasonable to navigate. One of the first (non-audio) decisions you need to make before you store your music in any format, is how much information you want. For a Beethoven symphony, say, do you want the key and the opus number as well as the symphony's number? With artists, do you want your conductor before your orchestra (for ease of recall) and do you want to list your artists or composers just by surname? These and similar decisions need to be made before your collection grows to unremediable proportions.

The iTunes Music Store (www.apple.com/ itunes/store) is the best destination for range and depth (and over the next few months we'll offer guidance to some of its hidden treasures), but now let me steer you to two sites that are worth investigation.

Pristine music

A site that builds on its skills in the field of remastering is pristineaudio.co.uk which offers a small selection of historic downloads. I sampled the company's wares in a free download (from pristineaudiodirect.com) of the third movement (Allegro vivacissimo) of the 1937 HMV recording of the Tchaikovslcy Violin Concerto with Jascha Heifetz and the LPO under John Barbirolli. The playing has tremendous energy and the sound quite wonderful immediacy (with very little hiss); I soon forgot that was a 68-year-old performance. To download the whole concerto would cost you £3.49 (or, if you wanted a custom-burned CD, that would be £3.99).

To purchase, I chose Beethoven's Emperor Concerto from 1932 with Artur Schnabel and the LSO under Malcolm Sargent. It cost the same and with broadband took about eight minutes to download (hardly the end of the world but rather slower than some sites; the only downside is that it comes across as a single track, something you can get round if you then choose to burn it to CD). Again, here is a performance of wonderful integrity and, channeled into my ears from my iPod, speaks down the years with thrilling vitality. (Other recordings include Boult's 1949 LPO Elgar First and 1945 BBC SO Planets, the 1937 Kulenkampff/BPO/Schmidt-Isserstedt Schumann Violin Concerto, five Offenbach overtures from the LPO and Jean Martinon (from 1951), the 1935 Busch Quartet Schubert Death and the Maiden, a 1927 British National Opera Company recording of Pagliacci (with Nash and Licette) and the 1950 Clemens Krauss Fledermazzs with Patzak, Gueden and Dermota).

MaxOpus Music

By far the most impressive independent download site for its range, ambition and functionality belongs to the Master of the Queen's Music, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies (www.maxopus.com). Like the Pristine site, the music is available as custom CDs as well as downloads (offered in MP3, M4A and WMA formats). The choice is extensive and the pricing sensibly done: there are five of the symphonies (ranging from £2-4), a clutch of the Strathclyde concertos, numerous smaller orchestral and choral works as well as the opera, The Doctor of Mydffai (7).

A custom compilation might contain Seven Skies of Winter (17' 754", £2 if bought singly), Step by Circle (1345", £1.60) and the Eighth Symphony, Antarctic (4034", £4): they fit nicely on a single CD and cost £6.85 (plus postage); quite a bargain. I watched the recent BBC Four programme which followed Davies as he visited Antarctica with the British Antarctic Survey before writing the Eighth Symphony (the work was commissioned to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Vaughan Williams's work of the same name). Davies's is an extraordinary work, one that responds more to the light than the sounds of the place: though there are some powerful evocations of contrasts of silence and noise that you encounter there. Listened to though headphones, this single-movement work makes an overwhelming impression. (t)