I've never listened to all of Dvorak's string quartets at one go, so I was looking forward to doing this with my newly purchased super-bargain box of the lot of them (for £12 for 10 CDs), played by the Stamitz Quartet.

I was disappointed. All but the late, famous ones, notably the "American", Op. 96, seemed to me to be like musical wallpaper, but in a bad way. I don't know if this was the playing of the Stamitz Quartet, or the composer's fault, or my fault, but something was wrong.

I had hoped for better. All the Dvorak symphonies, including the very earliest, are charming works and I recommend all of them, for example in the Phillips recordings made of them all by Witold Rowicki and the London Symphony Orchestra in the 1960s. Symphonies One and Two probably outstay their welcome a bit, but at least you start by giving them a welcome. Most of the quartets just seemed dull.

The other bargain box of string quartets I got on the same expedition was of the complete Beethovens, made in the 1960s by the Julliard Quartet, and the contrast was immediate. These are great from the word go, of course, and there is no question of the excellence of the playing either. A genuine bargain, this time at £15 for a mere 8 CDs.

Could it be that writing string quartets is more difficult than writing symphonies? With an entire orchestra, you can take refuge in musical colour. When writing for the string quartet, there is no special effects hiding place. Maybe a musical expert can explain.

Meanwhile, how about those prices. There is, as I said in a Samizdata comment yesterday, a real atmosphere of fire sale about the big London CD stores these days. CDs released only months ago have already done the price plunge. And these box sets are being virtually given away. I hate the packaging. I far prefer jewel cases to these horrid little cardboard mini-LP-sleeves. But at £2 per CD, how can I resist? (Sorry, can find no links for these CDs.)

One of the giveaway signs of a genuinely collapsing market is when the second hand shops don't know how cheap the stuff is in the brand new shops, and where half the punters don't either. The default price for the cheapest stuff in the second hand shops is now about £3. In the "new" shops, you can find things for about £1.50. This is new. The new recordings are not selling nearly well enough, and the big labels are eking out a living recycling older and older stuff, at cheaper and cheaper prices.

The big labels, in other words, aren't waiting to be destroyed by the likes of Brilliant Classics. They are becoming Brilliant Classics themselves. The classical music business is spinning ever deeper into its long predicted black hole.

The actual making of new and interesting recordings of classical music is fast becoming a economically irrational hobby, rather than a business. It is moving, in other words, in the opposite direction to that recently travelled by Britain's national newspapers.