Orchestra's ascendant Strauss slumps in a muddled recording

This time, the journey to the summit of Strauss' Alpine Symphony is obscured by fog and slowed by mud - which shouldn't happen when the trail guide is the Philadelphia Orchestra.

The orchestra's 2008 performance of the Strauss tone poem was highly acclaimed when recorded live in Verizon Hall; some even pinpointed the Alpine Symphony as the moment when current chief conductor Charles Dutoit claimed the Philadelphia Orchestra as his own.

But though the lavishly scored piece is the flagship release in the orchestra's reentry into the recording market on high-profile websites - with 35-plus titles that include Shostakovich conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch, Beethoven symphonies led by Christoph Eschenbach, and distinguished guests such as Vladimir Jurowski and Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos - one could argue that it should never have been released.

Many significant elements of it were lost in the performance's transition from the Kimmel Center to digital files. Whether on Amazon.com, emusic.com, Rhapsody or iTunes.com, the Fabulous Philadelphians are barely recognizable in the sound-compressed MP3s. Only on the higher-priced HDtracks website - where the FLAC (Free Audio Lossless Codec) file of the Alpine Symphony costs $17.98 - is the Dutoit version of the Philadelphia sound apparent.

Though the orchestra's emergence on such a wide retail platform is to be applauded, gatekeepers at various steps along the way - from the orchestra to the distributor IODA (which handles the majority of classical downloads) to the individual retailers - tend to be fatalistic. During numerous interviews, no clear solution emerged.

The orchestra could have expected recording challenges with Strauss' grand orchestration, which has never been easily captured. Compromise is likely to be particularly audible when so much sound is compressed into MP3 files, a medium suited more to pop music and recreational listening.

Also questionable is the presentation and price structure of the Philadelphia Orchestra downloads. Titles have less-than-sexy black-and-white covers; some of the most marketable conductors, such as Jurowski, don't rate cover photos that would make the albums more readily identifiable. One retailer, Amazon.com, charges full price - $8.99 - for a 30-minute performance of Shostakovich's Cello Concerto No. 1, while Rhapsody sells an hour-long Bruckner symphony for $3.99 - and lists a certain Philadelphia Orchestra conductor as "Eugene Normandy."