Instead of just keeping my bookmarks updated with sites hosting classical music of famous artists, I decided to make a little experimental web site displaying these links. If you are interested in listening to music by Schiff, Gould, Argerich, Horowitz, Perlman etc., check http://theblackpiano.com (as I didn't already had enough to do with this site ). I will also use this for experimental reasons before applying updates etc. to Piano Society.

Note that the site is just providing links to recordings and does not host them. Therefore, the ID3-tags are of out of my control and often in Russian language.

Robert, so you have another site too? Wow! (now I'll really never get any work done).
Just listened to Cortot's Chopin etude 10/3 over there. Thanks for that.

It's a nice looking site and I respect your work very much, Robert!

But what about copyright issues? Aren't you responsible for what you link to on your sites?

Actually, it is not illegal to link to copyrighted material (been tested in court in Sweden). However, it might be illegal for you to download a recording using this link in your country and of course to host it. It is a controversial subject and it might be a controversial site.

Many of the recordings are located in Russia copyright laws are somewhat sloppy but for instance the Cortot etudes are from the 78 rpm vinyl released in 1933 so that is actually not a copyright issue anywhere in the world anymore. Everything recorded before 1937 (70 years rule) can be distributed freely on Internet within EU. Everything recorded before 1957 is free in Canada while US has strange copyright laws claiming that anything before 1922 is copyrighted (the Walt Disney's lobbists made sure that law was implemented). But I feel a bit bad for having this site up and if it causes me problems, I will probably take the easy way out and take down links to copyrighted material.

Ah, okay. Here in Germany, we had a different court decision which forbids linking to illegal material, as far as I know. Good for you your country allows it.

So it's a moral issue for you. Of course, I don't have a white vest (I don't know if you have this term in English ), either, as I have also downloaded many of the recordings on the Chubrik site, but further distributing these on a website... I don't know if that's worth the effort such a site makes. It's up to you, of course.

That is really interesting as it would certainly criminalize Google. In Sweden, they thought of it as linking to a site with copyrighted content equals linking to copyrighted material. If that would be forbidden, it would be an extremely problematic situation for all newspapers, search engines, wikipedia etc. How about I put up an URL to a copyrighted material but don't make it a clickable link or if I mention that for instance the Chubrik site exists (which is only partly what I link to)?

Thanks for the info on blackpiano.com. I'm listening to Rach. play his 3rd concerto, but it sounds to clear to be an old recording. It's a great site.

There's only one thing I didn't like and that was the glaring error in subject/verb agreement....the second word "is" should be "are." People often make that error when speaking, but it's inexcusable on site for "educated" people. Sorry for being so picky.

I criticize someone else's English and don't carefully proofread my own. (too) That's what I get for being so picky.

Huh! That was a really bad grammar and thanks for pointing it out (corrected by now).

Regarding Rach. He recorded all his piano concertos which today should serve as a guide line for how to play them. Unfortunately, it seems like not many artists do so but sentimentalize them. The quality is not the best as they were recorded in in the 30ths (about 70 years ago!) but definitely possible to listen to.

Great, now I'll never sleep.