Usually, flipping through the classical channel on a flight is an exercise in masochism that ends with me saying aloud, “this is why classical music is dead and rotting!” But Delta’s new selection on 757-200(E) is different.

Twenty-four complete classical discs are presented with media-player style controls. I began by listening to Julian Anderson Khorovod from his CD Alhambra Fantasy; this is a CD that I’ve long enjoyed and actually had with me on my laptop, but having it presented to me in my seatback inspired me to listen to it again. Plus the dynamics compression was done well, leaving everything audible without taking away much of the crispness of the percussion. Say what you want about the importance of audio fidelity, compression is really useful when listening on a plane even with noise-cancelling headphones; I wish iTunes had it.

I passed over the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Higdon’s City Scape and Concerto for Orchestra (not bad pieces, but not my favorites, and I just recently taught City Scape) and continued with Holst’s second suite for winds conducted by Fredrick Fennell (the recording that begins with the sound of a tuba player losing his job). I continued with a CD pairing Mozart’s Gran Partita with Berg’s Chamber Concerto. Unfortunately, additional information about the discs beyond title and track names isn’t available, but it appears to be on a Decca label.

I listened for a bit to the Symphony of Psalms on a disc paired with the Symphony in C and Symphony in 3 Movements–I don’t know who was conducting or playing, the string playing and brass were vigorous, but the chorus’s sound was really affected by the editing and/or compression, and the reed and piano performances were weak, and there was so much else to dig into that I moved on to Tan Dun’s Symphony 1997, a work I didn’t know. It had some of the clichéd pathos and (to me) unoriginal percussion writing that has not let me yet fully embrace Tan as a top notch composer, but like most of his best works, the pacing is perfect. That it’s about as much of a symphony as Cats is an opera is immaterial.

In a somewhat orientalist decision, adjacent to the Tan CD, we find Lang Lang playing recent Chinese compositions on his “Dragon Songs” CD and a complete recording of Puccini’s Turandot (Sutherland, Pavarotti, Pears, Mehta—this is no bargain-basement recording). But we forget about such decisions when we realize that they’ve actually included vocal music!—something few classical radio stations dare to play anymore—also represented by a terrible muzaky collection of trite by Placido Domingo (typical airline fare; the one true bomb), a complete Solti recording of Die Walküre (less typical; unfortunately, not presented as a gapless album and with weird fades), Strauss’s Four Last Songs, and the Faure Requiem. John Corigliano’s Second Symphony (a transcription of his string quartet) is actually something I’ve heard on other flights, but Ives’s string quartet and Mahler 8 were surprising finds.

The net result is that you can listen even listen with fresh ears to the CDs of The Nutcracker, Bach (WTC and Goldberg), Beethoven 5, Joshua Bell playing the Four Seasons, or Bernstein’s Copland (Appalachian Spring). Just by having other choices, these works regain their status as masterpieces that have stood the test of time and do not feel like they usually do in these situations, as warhorses chosen to pander to the largest possible audiences.

Most airlines seem to secure rights from one or two labels (usually Sony with its own limited list of the same artists), but someone at Delta must have spent a lot of time making calls. The variety of labels presented is remarkable: Decca, DG, Philips, Telarc, Ondine, Sony, and even Naxos are available. Browsing beyond classical, the other stations seemed to take some advantage of the added space to go beyond the major hits, but did not seem to me nearly as adventurous as the classical station. One bow to the corporate world: Lily Allen’s “Fuck You”—ubiquitous in every bar, taxi, and grocery store in Europe this year—is bowdlerized to “*uck You” and loses its cute charm. But the lesser depth of these stations was no big loss, because I kept returning to something new on the classical station. For their product’s ability to keep a musicologist occupied without his iPod for an entire eight hour flight, those who worked on the system for Delta’s 757 are definitely to be praised.