Tower R.I.P.

We’re in deep, deep mourning over the demise of Tower Records. We know it’s a classic story of late capitalist hubris: big store comes in and prices all the small Mom and Pop stores out of business. And then goes bankrupt, leaving nothing in its wake, but a giant sucking sound. But we happen to be hard- bitten classical music fans, and Tower has been our manna in the midwestern wilderness. In addition to the well worn symphonic chestnuts, it stocked the odd, the unusual, treasures we’d never thought of buying until we came across it while looking for something else.

Where will we go, what will we do? We could download our collection and new stuff onto an iPod, but it would take forever, not to mention the fact that that they sound like bad AM radios.

We’re at a total loss. We’ve got to take some time off to sort it all through. But in the meantime, no one could have put it our situation better than Tommasini, music critic of the New York Times did last week

Requiem for a Store’s Dying Classical Department

By ANTHONY TOMMASINI

The classical music department at the Tower Records store near Lincoln Center is a funereal place these days. Longtime shoppers are making final pilgrimages and having weepy farewells with sales clerks, some of whom have worked there for years and been helpful guides to music lovers. No one can believe that Tower Records, the retail chain that has dominated the market for decades, is going out of business. The bankrupt operation’s assets were sold to a liquidation company early this month for more than $130 million. All 89 of its United States stores are closing, probably by the end of the year.

Without Tower, the city has few options for classical CD shoppers.

The loss of Tower Records will have a severe impact on niche markets like classical music. According to one industry insider’s estimate, Tower Records alone accounted for up to 50 percent of sales in the specialty genres.

Older record collectors have memories of wonderful, quirky independent stores run by managers who were passionate, if opinionated, about the music they sold. I remember when Pamela Dellal, a good mezzo-soprano based in Boston, worked as a saleswoman at the Harvard Coop in Cambridge in the early 1980’s. I used to call her the czarina of classical music at the Coop because she was so informed, efficient and forceful in her recommendations.

For many years Tower Records at Lincoln Center has been the closest New Yorkers have had to those small shops of earlier times. This is a paradox, I know, since the company, which opened its first store in 1960 in Sacramento, grew into a bullying retail chain that pushed out independents. Still, because of its location, Tower Records at Lincoln Center was a mingling place for classical aficionados. There, music students, opera buffs, contemporary-music devotees, everyday concertgoers and, now and then, well-known artists would bump into one another and talk shop.

Just last week, while checking out the scene, I watched as two older couples asked the classical department manager for help finding specific items. One wanted William Bolcom’s opera “A View From the Bridge.” The other wanted Philip Glass’s “Mechanical Ballet.” How’s that for sophisticated New York tastes?

The shelves in the classical department are woefully bare right now, since Tower has been holding a liquidation sale, with prices slashed by up to 40 percent. The room devoted to opera and aria recordings is especially barren. Opera buffs are scavengers. You can imagine the scene, like something out of “Lord of the Flies,” when the doors opened on the first day of the sale.

As of last week, if you wanted a recording of “Tosca,” you were too late to find the classic versions with Callas or Tebaldi. But there were ample copies of “Tosca” with Fiorenza Cedolins in the title role and that paragon of Puccini tenors, Andrea Bocelli, as Cavaradossi.

You could argue that Tower Records courted its own demise in 1995, when the company became one of the first marketers to introduce an online shopping site. Those who embrace the Web as the ideal way to purchase CD’s argue that Tower Records became obsolete. Anything can be bought online these days.

Maybe. But for many people, tracking down a CD online, with only various critiques by unknown purchasers to guide them, is not the same as mingling with other opera buffs in front of the Verdi shelves. I am convinced that there is money to be made for someone willing to set up a classical music CD shop in New York, a place that does not promise to stock everything, but provides an in-depth catalog, including a smart selection of historic recordings and essential reissues. Besides, how many times have you bought something that you simply chanced upon by flipping through stacks of CD’s at an actual store?

Where will classical music lovers in New York shop now? The Virgin Megastore in Times Square? From what I can tell, its classical stock is weirdly spotty, though maybe I’m wrong, since that gargantuan, noisy place, with pop music blasting from overhead speakers, intimidates me.

There is the gift shop at the Metropolitan Opera. If the managers got rid of all the tacky souvenirs and overpriced jewelry, expanded the shelves for opera CD’s and offered decent prices, it could become the go-to place for opera recordings. The Juilliard Bookshop, with its small but interesting stock of CD’s, could also help fill the void, especially if the school enticed students to work there part time. If you are looking for a recording of Bach’s solo cello suites or music by Berio, wouldn’t you trust the recommendation of young Juilliard musicians?

Meanwhile, the Tower Records at Lincoln Center should be getting more stock over the next couple of months as warehouses are cleared out. So there may be potential bargains for intrepid collectors. Last week one older couple searching through the Wagner recordings looked so forlorn that I asked if I could help them. They wanted a “Ring,” but there were no complete sets available, just a confusing array of live historic recordings mostly of interest to “Ring” fanatics.

I suggested that if they wanted to have a complete, top-notch “Ring,” they should probably get one of the classic sets conducted by Georg Solti, Herbert von Karajan or maybe James Levine. The Solti set with Birgit Nilsson as Brünnhilde sounded exciting to them.

“Where can we get it?” they asked.

What could I say? I told them to try amazon.com.