Great hi-fi can give you goosebumps. And it relates to another source of horripilation: live music, and its recordings. I've also always been a live music junkie—ever since I was a kid.

I was fortunate to have grown up attending the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Cincinnati Pops Orchestra's "LolliPops" children's concerts. I'd seen some tepid live acts as a kid (ie, Donny and Marie). But nothing prepared me for my first rock concert. It, um, rocked my world.

Unless you live under a rock, you've followed Russia's invasion of Ukraine. You know something about sanctions against Russia and Russia's responses to those sanctions. If, in addition to not living under a rock, you're a tube-audio aficionado or electric guitar nut, you may have thought about a likely consequence of that war that's far less momentous than the destruction and carnage we see on TV: Will I be able to get new tubes for my amplifier? Especially those lovely Russia-made tubes.

National pride is the damnedest thing. When I was growing up in the Netherlands, schoolchildren were taught that the inventor of the printing press was a Dutchman named Laurens Janszoon Coster. Germany's Johannes Gutenberg was waved away as an also-ran, if he was mentioned at all.

I wrote about the music industry's impressive recovery in the February 2022 AWSI. Robust LP sales were a headline item of that report, but they're a sideshow: Paid-subscription streaming is what is bringing the industry back.

When I wrote that, 2021 wasn't quite over, so year-end financials weren't available. They're available now.

Eric Nathan: Missing Words, Carolyn Sampson: Trennung: Songs of Separation, Brahms: Piano Trios Nos.2 & 3, Brahms: String Sextets, Mahler: Symphony No.4 and Hans Abrahamsen: Schnee.