The Web site was born of Coblence's desire to set Andante apart from other labels. Hoping at first to bypass record stores, where he was afraid his recordings would be lost in the mass of conventional releases, he decided that the best way to reach music lovers was through the Internet.
As it turned out, he has arranged to have his discs segregated into special Andante sections of stores and sold in concert hall and museum gift shops. And his musings on the Internet led him to develop the Andante Web site, in which he and two partners -- Pierre Berge, a founder of the Yves Saint-Laurent couture house, and Jean-Francis Bretelle, the president of Oleron Finance, a Paris banking concern -- have invested US$5 million.
"We did not want it to be simply an e-commerce site," Coblence said of the Web site. "Our mission is to provide access to knowledge about music, both for music lovers who are not well versed and who need basic references, and for sophisticated listeners, musicians, professionals, musicologists and universities. We wanted to compile exclusive resources that were deep and complex."
Bells and whistles
So although visitors to the Web site can read about, hear excerpts from and order Andante's recordings, they are more likely to be attracted to its other bells and whistles. They can access reports from newspapers around the world, as well as reviews, interviews and essays, some from other publications, some commissioned by the site.
They can also search for performances by date, location, performer or work, or consult the Concise Grove Dictionary of Music, discographies, composers' works lists (still in progress) and biographical information.
The main draw, though, is the "Musicroom," where performances are available as streaming audio and video (formats that can be played but not easily downloaded). Among the current offerings is a recent performance of the Bruckner Ninth by Pierre Boulez and the Vienna Philharmonic. There are also works by Boulez from the Salzburg Easter Festival.
The performance sites are linked to program notes and even to translated song texts. And for more serendipitous listening, there is Andante Radio, which streams a combination of historical and contemporary recordings.
In recent months Coblence has reached agreements for live opera from La Scala, and has established working relationships with Boulez and with Maurizio Pollini, the pianist, who will be undertaking expansive projects for the site. Coblence has also arranged for a Web broadcast of Jessye Norman's performance of Schubert's Winterreise, in a Robert Wilson staging, which takes place in Paris in September. But the heart of his programming will come from the agreements he has reached with the Vienna Philharmonic, the London Symphony and the Philadelphia Orchestra.
The orchestras have given Andante not only the exclusive rights to their weekly concerts during the season but also access to their radio archives, for use both in Web broadcasts and for release on compact discs. Once the performances are Web broadcast, they will remain available as part of Andante's online archives, from which listeners can retrieve them at any time.
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