Telemann, Mendelssohn, iTunes, and Google
Sunday Aug 26, 2007
Viola Concerto in G major by George Philipp Telemann. Violin Concerto in E minor Op. 64 by Felix Mendelssohn. I'll start my music recommendations with these two which impressed me with the power of digital music distribution. I was wishing I had a recording of my high school viola solo, typed "Telemann" into iTunes, and soon I had the concerto. Getting the Mendelssohn was more interesting because I didn't remember the name of the concerto nor the composer. All I remembered was that while I practiced Telemann my friend practiced a violin concerto that everyone in class agreed was the most technically difficult.
So I searched with Google for "violin concerto" and "technically difficult" and Mendelssohn popped to the top of the list. I typed the name into iTunes, quickly verified it was the E minor, and was presented with many recordings of it. I listened to the preview clips of them until finally I narrowed it down to two interpretations I liked most. One was by Itzhak Perlman. The other which I finally chose was by Zino Francescatti, a French violinist I had never heard of before, playing with the Cleveland Orchestra.
I never could have done anything like this in a physical record store. They might have had three or four recordings of the concerto, but not so many, and surely not including relatively obscure performers.
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