Mark's Links

Pianists and the Piano

• A site devoted to the great pianist Leopold Godowsky, subject of my (unfinished) master's thesis.
• A discography of recordings by Sviatoslav Richter, my first pianistic love.
• International Piano Archives at Maryland, perhaps the world's greatest resource for piano-related stuff.
• Young Chang, manufacturers of the grand piano I own and of Kurzweil samplers.
• The Piano Parlor, a pretty good entryway into all things pianistic on the web (alas, sporadically maintained these days - if maintained at all).
• Walden Hughes' site, pianist, pedagogue, and long-time contributor to the piano-l mailing list.

Miscellaneous Music

• Sikesdi Press, publisher of works by little-known and even-less-than-little-known composers.
• Harvard's great list of internet resources for music research.

Record Shopping

• Berkshire Record Outlet, an overstock/remainder store that's my idea of a great shopping experience.
• Arbiter Records, a boutique company specializing in historical performers, with an emphasis on pianists.
• Marston Records, another boutique company specializing in historical performers, with an emphasis on singers (though their catalogue contains some piano treasures).
• Appian Publications & Recordings, a British label devoted (mostly) to piano reissues.
• Pavilion Records, Inc., which produces Pearl and (sometimes) Opal CDs.
• Music & Arts Programs of America, a wide-ranging company that has equal commitments to both historical and modern performers. The site also contains an excellent little essay on CD piracy (see Paradise Lost below).
• archiphon, a German producer of reissues, mostly dedicated to conductors. Though only a few are piano-related, they belong in any serious pianophile's library.
• Paradise Lost, web-site for the hard-to-find Dante HPC (Historical Piano Collection) disks. Unlike Italian labels such as Enterprise Piano Library and Arlecchino, which are (or were, the the latter case) purely pirate labels - that is, they simply reissued other company's CDs, thereby chilling the entire reissue industry - Dante is a mix of pirate and honest producer.
• Qualiton Imports, an importer of small classical/world music labels.
• H&B Direct, a very good online classical CD store.
• JEM Music, an importer, with whom I've had a stormy relationship, of hard-to-find classical labels. Unfortunately, the site is incomplete (that is, the entire catalogue isn't listed,) is rarely updated, and lacks a functioning search feature.
• Tower Records Classical, to which I still have an irrational attachment dating from four years in New York City. Pricey, but huge, and their browse feature is one of the best.
• Compact Disk Connection, which has a smaller selection than Tower but generally lower prices.
• GEMM, a very fine comparison-shopping site.

Friends

Yes, even critics have a few.

• Atomic Elroy (performance artist, playwright, composer, all-around gadfly)
• Acoustic Projections, owned by the amazing Doug Wilson, the only person I know who's designed and built printed circuit boards in his house.
• Michael Shea, pianist and composer, with whom I spent countless joyful hours playing bebop in the late 1970s.

Miscellaneous

• If you aren't getting your spices from Penzey's Spice House, you're probably not getting the best.

Humor

• My favorite author is Dostoevsky, but the author I've read the most books by - with the possible exception of the Hardy Boys - is P.G. Wodehouse.
• Mr. Boffo, one of my favorite comic strips. Many strips archived, but be prepared for long waits.
• Robotman, another one of my favorites.

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