In the coming months, 31 Muti-conducted Philadelphia Orchestra titles, as well as Wolfgang Sawallisch's entire discography with the orchestra (some 14 titles), will be available, custom-printed for those who missed them first time around.
"These were pulled off the market because they had run their course, because they had sold what they were going to sell," said Tom Evered, senior vice president and general manager of EMI Classics. "But even I was taken aback at realizing how many of these wonderful recordings had been deleted. Now they're back - and in their original program."
The timing would seem to be ragingly quixotic. Tower Records is gone, and many communities haven't been as lucky as Philadelphia to see the F.Y.E. company quickly taking its place. Besides, aren't compact discs being replaced by digital downloads? And if the recordings had run their course, why should they sell now?
The answers come in an alternative business model hatched over the last 12 years by the series of companies that eventually morphed into Arkiv, which is located in Bryn Mawr, but only virtually; the Main Line mailing address is a vestige of the company's high concentration of Philadelphia-area employees. Arkiv gains strength from its decentralized invisibility, a quality that comes with having grappled with the questionable efficiency of the traditional compact-disc retail store.
Of late, the Web site is focusing on the large amount of great music that went nearly unnoticed in the hectic 1980s-early '90s heyday of the compact disc. Interestingly, its reissue priorities are based on the frequency of play on radio stations, which keep deleted titles in their libraries.
