Following the publication of Haruki Murakami’s new novel 1Q84, the Cleveland Orchestra reports a spike in sales of a 1990 CD that contains that orchestra’s performance of Janácek’s Sinfonietta. The protagonist of the Japanese-language novel, released on May 29, listens to that Janácek work. Cleveland says that 6,000 orders have come in for the CD since the book was published. The recording also includes Kodály’s Dances of Galanta and Dances of Marosszék and Janácek’s Taras Bulba, recorded by the Philadelphia and Toronto Symphony orchestras. Sony, which released the recording, says it had shipped as many copies of the CD following the release of 1Q84 as it has in the years since the album’s conversion into a CD in 1990. The Hayakawa Publishing Corporation, which publishes a Japanese-language version of George Orwell’s 1984, also received several thousand orders for that book since the Murakami book was released. The new Murakami book is titled after the Orwell novel; the record company is rushing to produce extra copies of the CD for sale in stores this week.
Posted July 17, 2009
