Musique Gourmet serving its last classics.

Byline: Bob Keefer The Register-Guard

A landmark on Eugene's classical music landscape is about to disappear.

For 22 years, Don Lambdin's independent music store, the Musique Gourmet, has sold classical music recordings in downtown Eugene - first vinyl records and then increasingly, and at last exclusively, compact disc recordings.

But the precipitously changing market for music recordings, combined with the fallout from reductions in music education in schools over the past generation, has brought Lambdin's business to within a heartbeat of flatlining.

He starts shipping his stock back to suppliers on July 15 and plans to close his doors by July 31.

Lambdin, who is now 71, was starting his third career when he invested $5,000 and started a classical record store in the back of Bradford's Home Entertainment on April 15, 1985.

He had worked as a radiation physicist in the Public Health Service. After he retired from the government job, he became an announcer on a classical music radio station in Las Vegas.

He moved to Eugene in 1984. "I decided to move somewhere green," he said. "I was headed for Seattle but housing costs there were too high."

He was drawn to Eugene by the budding arts scene here, symbolized by the Hult Center, which had opened just a year before his arrival. "Eugene was like a small version of Aspen," he said. "But much more affordable."

The Musique Gourmet came about when he bought some speakers at Bradford's and got talking about his personal music collection, which now numbers perhaps 1,000 LPs and 3,000 or more CDs. The store gave him space, rent free, to sell recordings to its audiophile customers.

After five years, he opened his own store on Fifth Avenue.

There his business bloomed. Lambdin had gone into business just in time to catch the wave of people replacing their LP collections with CDs.

Lambdin pulled out a chart that shows his business volume over the two decades. The graph is shaped almost like a bell curve, with a steep increase in volume on the left, a peak in about 1995, and then a gradual tapering off, bringing the curve closer and closer to a horizontal dotted line that represents his break-even point.

A few years ago he lost his lease on Fifth Avenue and moved back into rented space in the Bradford's building. He's maintained a steady base of regular customers there but has found it harder and harder each year to attract new ones.

CDs, he says, are just too easy to copy.

"I am just guessing," he said. "But I don't think many people download classical music. But it's so easy to copy a CD that people borrow a CD from the library or a friend and burn their own."

He also blames the slowdown in business on the disappearance of music education from most schools.

"The schools aren't doing as much as they used to, as far as educating young people about music," he said. "The fresh customers just aren't there."

While he's kept the store stocked with a broad variety of classical recordings, Lambdin has very particular taste in his own life.

"I am very much an Anglophile," he said. "Not many other people seem to grasp that. I have a lot of 20th century music, too. Most of my own personal collection is made up of either Renaissance music or 20th century. I bring in Beethoven, Bach and Brahms to the store just to satisfy other people. I only have two or three Mozart pieces in my own personal collection."

As he prepares to close - and with the Oregon Bach Festival now in town - Lambdin is staying open seven days a week, selling his remaining stock. He had about 3,400 CDs left on Friday afternoon.

Everything in the store except used CDs is discounted 25 percent; that goes up to 30 percent after July 16.

Meanwhile, Lambdin said, business is booming like never before. "Yesterday it was like gangbusters, for me anyway," he said Friday. "I did as much sales in one day as I would normally do in a really good week."

MUSIQUE GOURMET

The end of the line for Don Lambdin's classical music store

Sale: All new CDs in the store are being sold for 25 percent off; the price goes to 30 percent off after July 16

Address: 942 Olive St.; enter off the alley by Bradford's Home Entertainment

Hours: Noon to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday; noon to 5 p.m. Saturday; noon to 4 p.m. Sunday through July 16; after that he'll close on Tuesdays; the store closes completely by July 31.