PLay it again.(establishment of the Classical Recording Foundation)

Adam Abeshouse, a Grammy-winning classical-record producer and helpless hyper-enthusiast, has taken several concrete measures to address what he regards as an urgent imperative: to rescue Bach, Brahms, Beethoven, Mozart, and that crowd from a specific sort of oblivion. In October, during a concert at Carnegie Hall, Abeshouse formally launched the Classical Recording Foundation, an entity devoted to the proposition that posterity is despoiled when artists are denied the chance to record their own interpretations of certain repertoire. For a long while, it's been evident that the executives behind the major classical-recording labels (Sony, Phillips, EMI, etc.) are far more aroused by the hypothetical bottom-line appeal of, say, Dolly Parton singing the Bach "Wedding Cantata" or Bon Jovi conducting the "1812 Overture" than they are by the prospect of investing in Gilbert Kalish and Joel Krosnick's rendition of Brahms's cello sonatas, or the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio's complete cycle of Beethoven trios, or the St. Luke Chamber Ensemble's "Brandenburg Concertos." As it happens, Abeshouse, who won his Grammy in 2000, has produced the latter three albums, all under the mom-and-pop-ish Arabesque label, and the Carnegie Hall concert honored these musicians as the Classical Recording Foundation's inaugural award winners.

What inspired Abeshouse to create the C.R.F. was this principled logic: if live performances of the New York Philharmonic and every other professional classical ensemble could not exist without huge philanthropic subsidies, why should recorded classical music be held to an entirely different fiscal standard? So he set about establishing the foundation and enlisted Susan Rose, an amateur pianist and peripatetic patron of the arts, to chair its board. In the future, if all goes according to plan--which is to say, whenever there's enough money in the kitty--the C.R.F. will produce and distribute, under its own label or in partnership with other labels, whatever it deems worthy and feasible.

Is there a need, after Alfred Brendel, for anyone else's Beethoven piano sonatas? Does the immortality of Glenn Gould's "Goldberg Variations" mean that no mortal should ever again bother? (Not that either Brendel or Gould--driven by fervors that Abeshouse has no trouble sympathizing with--hesitated to re-record these same works.) "I've had people tell me, 'I already have a copy of Beethoven's violin concertos. Why would I need another one?' " Abeshouse said the other day. "But does anyone invoke that sort of reasoning when it comes to great ...