Tune surfing

James Jolly gets to grips with a Danish master on holiday, tunes in to the best radio stations around the world and presents the artists who want your vote

Summer is usually the time when we think about taking our music with us on holiday - unless of course holiday means a break from the easy availability of music. These days many hotels, apartments and villas have some kind of hi-fl system – don't forget that you can connect your iPod or MP3 player to it with a simple phono-to-headphone lead (a couple of pounds' expenditure). Keep it with your foreign plug adaptors and you can have music – your music – wherever you go. Of course if you take the iPod cradle you can see the display rather more easily but it's really not necessary (and you can also use the same lead to connect up your laptop to the hi-fl if you carry your music around that way).

I often use holidays to get to grips with a substantial but particular output from a composer or artist that I feel I should know better. One two-week holiday in the South of France was a perfect opportunity to get to know - or at least put down some pretty solid foundations for - the Beethoven string quartets. This year I didn't set my sights quite so high and decided to "learn" the Nielsen symphonies, works I aways enjoy when I hear them but don't really feel I know. The most immediate and obvious choice was the San Francisco Symphony cycle under Herbert Blomstedt (which garnered a Gramophone Award en route). Surprisingly there was no sign of it on iTunes - though Blomstedt's Sibelius is there, maybe symptomatic of how Nielsen is perceived today. Classicsandjazz.co.uk, the download site from Universal's UK arm, did have it - the two Double Deccas (Symphonies Nos 1-3 and 4-6) at £9.99 each, though you can buy the symphonies individually (not a terribly economical way to do it, though). While on the site - which, incidentally, has had a make-over since its launch - I noticed that Neeme Järvi's Gothenberg cycle from DG is also on offer. That'll set you back £14.99. Incidentally, iTunes offers Blomstedt's earlier cycle on EMI with an idiomatically Danish orchestra but with its typical resistance to offering individual tracks you'll be parting with £24.99 for the cycle plus a couple of short extras.

Over at eMusic.com – which has recently put up its prices (30 tracks for £10.99; 50 for £11.99—the best deal if you're a heavy consumer – and 75 for £14.99) – you can find Osmo Vanska's fine series with the BBC Scottish SO (Nos 2 & 5—six tracks; Nos 3 & 4—eight tracks and Nos 1 & 6— eight tracks: in other words 22 tracks, leaving you quite a few left over for an outlay of less than a single full-price CD). And while you're at eMusic you'll thid an excellent piece on Nielsen the symphonist, and specifically the Second and Fifth Symphonies, byjustin Davidson, one of the finest US-based writers on classical music today. As a very appealing alternative eMusic also offers Michael Schonwandt's the Danish RSO series on the Dacapo label - and of course there's something special about an orchestra playing its own native music (just think of the LSO and Elgar or the New York Phil and Copland). The deal is the same as with the Vänskä cycle. Now at classicsonline (the home of Naxos and its distributed labels), you'll find the Schonwandt cycle offered at 320Kbps (higher than at eMusic) but the individual album price is £9.99 so the total is significantly more expensive.

If Lossless sound is what you're after then Chandos's site, theclassicalshop.net, offers Bryden Thomson's RSNO cycle in studioquality sound. There are some very fine individual performances in this cycle - try The Inextinguishable (No 4) first to sample Thomson's ability to fuse ice and fire. Perhaps the Scottish temperament makes for a good Nielsen interpreter. Whether you're after Nielsen or not, it's certainly worth shopping around. And remember that music purchased from all these sites will work with your iPod.

Afew issues ago, I was enthusing about the Squeezebox network music player (in a nutshell it's a small device that you connect to your hi-fl and it searches out the music stored on your PC or Mac and wirelessly transmits it so that you can listen to it in high-quality 24-bit sound). I've been using a Squeezebox Classic, but the manufacturer Logitech (masters of all things wireless) has since released a newer model, the Squeezebox Duet. Both allow you to browse the music on your computer on a digital screen (it won't, however, recognise music encoded with iTunes' proprietory DRM, but if you're interested in hi-fl-quality sound that's not likely to be an issue).

My initial comments and listening focused on recorded music (downloaded music files or ripped CDs), but over the past couple of months I've also been tapping into another of the Squeezebox's tricks, the ability to stream internet radio. I have mine set up to browse via the Winamp player and there's enough music out there to satisfying even the most jaded of palates. And even in the field of classical music there's a lot to be found - and browsing couldn't be easier. Many of the larger US-based networks (or those that haven't metamorphosed into "soft rock") are there but I've been listening quite a lot to Dutch stations - not only is their selection of music good but they provide exemplary data with artist details as well as the composers' (not always the case, which can be infuriating if you hear something you like but have no idea what it is).

There are of course numerous internet radios on the market - I have one but must admit to rarely using it since the Squeezebox gives me the freedom of the house to listen in.

Now as with last year we're teaming up with radio stations around the world for the voting for Artist of the Year (full details of how to vote are on the website - gramophone. co.uk). To help you choose your favourite I've built this month's playlist around the shortlisted musicians. Four singers feature on the list and two can be sampled on the same recording. Anna Netrebko and

Rolando Villazón have forged one of opera's most rewarding duos and their magic can be enjoyed in the recent DG recording of

La bohème, rapturously received in these pages byJoim Steane. You can download it from iTunes, classicsandjazz and The DG Webshop - and if you're loath to acquire the whole thing on spec, why not take a couple of tracks: "Che gelida manina" running on into "Si, mi chiamano Mimi" will set you back €2.58, and after all any Bohème stands or falls by the chemistry between its protagonists.

Gerald Finley (who could easily have appeared as one of the Bohemians) is an artist at the peak of his form - but as Hyperion is rather undecided about its digital future I can't steer you to his new Barber and Ives recitals, so why not catch him in John Foulds's A World

Requiem? And Natalie Dessay, who has had such a splendid year on disc has to be heard in her "Italian Opera Arias" collection for Virgin.

Three pianists are also in the running.

Paul Lewis demands to be heard in a Beethoven Piano sonata (eMusic is the best destination) and Murray Perahia's Bach Partitas were a triumph (iTunes). Marc-André Hamelin, again a Hyperion artist, is not that well represented, though last year's surprising - at least from this artist known for repertoire of fearsome demands - and wonderful Haydn sonatas are available from iTunes.

Conductor Gustavo Dudamel's "Fiesta" album of Latin American music is life-enhancing from beginning to end (get it at iTunes, classicsandjazz or the The DG Webshop).

And his colleague Ivan Fischer is heard at his finest with his Budapest Festival Orchestra, though there's nothing terribly recent available online. Go for his lovely Rachmaninov Second Symphony (eMusic). And our sole string-playing nominee is violinist Hilary Haim - her recording of the Schoenberg Violin

Concerto certainly had the critics sit up. Unless you side with Jascha Heifetz who couldn't make head or tail of the piece, find it at the usual DG outlets. Happy listening - and don't forget to vote!

Hilary Hahn: the critics sat up