Classical Music as Relics for easy listening

Nah!
Classical still continues!
Order Schnittke from Russia or from Europe to get either the same price or even less including shipping to your door. Also dig-on Kronos Quartet.

Other modern names are: Leo Brower, Hector Villa Lobos(spanish guitar), Daniel Binelli(tango), Astor Piazzolla...

The pre-Schnittke generation from Russia is Skryabin, Prokofiev, Rubinstain and Rachmaninoff.

Great acoustic and electronic pieces composed by Irmin Schmidt especially in Filmmusik collection.

And at last Jethro Tull is realy influenced by classical music! They're classic!

Sounds like "Easy Classical" is just the format of that particular radio station (WGMS right). I don't agree with your assessment of WGMS, however I do agree they play a lot of chamber music and baroque music.

A commercial station needs to worry a lot more about listener levels than a public station in order to sell advertising. That is probably why most commericial Jazz stations play Cool Jazz, and the hard core Jazz is also on public stations.

Personally being a big fan of chamber music I won't complain. Since Schubert wrote a ton of chamber music in his short life, I'd think you would like the station.

For modern, I don't think Philip Glass would work on the radio. People would think the CD is skipping and call the station. You'd also need one of those street gang subwoofer systems in your trunk to play Christopher Rouse!! (LOL)!

WBJC up in Baltimore (91.5) does a better job of playing a well rounded list of classical. It is an independent non-commerical public station (ie, not PBS).

WETA (90.9) the PBS station plays mostly classical around the full slate of non-music NPR programming.

I think it more insidious than just Borders and B&N. At least they have a classical music section, limited as it maybe; I did get my Naxos CDs of Schnittke and Part at Borders. But it started much earlier than that. It really began when Toscannini became a cult god and his worshippers bowed to his whims. He only conducted the warhorses at the NY Philharmonic. He conducted Beethoven's Fifth or Brahms4th over and over. Until the midcult cult "understood" the work. Time-Life for years and years had the great composers series of records.....the same composers and the same works over and over as if there was only 40 or 50 great works. It was not until the late 50s or early 60s that the midcult could "get" Bruckner, let alone Mahler. The FM radio is the same, 3rd rate baroque or the same warhorses. It is like they do not want to offend the audience. Whether thru the airwaves or in the concert halls. When was the lasttime you heard an Ives symphony or a Piston symphony. Even Schoenberg's Guerrelieder. It is not so overtly dissonant that the audience cannot understand. Do they think we are that stupid or are they that stupid that they themselvesdo not understand. Maybe they cannot afford to be adventuresome in selecting music as to offend the patrons and listeners of the great dead composers.

WGMS only plays parts (one movement) of major works, so they can have a lot of commercial breaks. Again a symptom of being a for-profit commercial station.

You will hear a whole work on WBJC in Baltimore. They also broadcast whole live concerts and operas. WETA is kind of in-between. Listen to the Performance Today program some evening on WETA.