"Hard" Classical

All you classical music fans in and around Colombo: there's this nice place on duplication road that sells only classical music CDs. It's not immediately visible from the road because it's actually a part of a store called "Titus Stores". Somebody told me that the reason for this unusual placement is that the son of this store's owner is a classical music aficionado.

Anyway, I went there for the second time in three months last weekend. I was greeted by a young store assistant who was not the regular guy. He seemed to revel in a "I-know-classical" (as in I-know-kung-fu) attitude as he showed me around the shelfs (obviously thinking I'm a clueless novice in for just browsing, who can be easily impressed).

And then I asked for Franz Liszt. The guy was slightly taken aback but not for long. "We only have hard classical," he said, with much the same attitude. And then he proceeded to recite all the usual names -- Mozart, Beethovan etc.

Suddenly, I had had enough. "Hard classical?" I thought to myself. "What the #$%@ is hard classical? Look mister, don't shit me. I know my shit" (I of course didn't say that out loud).

So I went into specifics.

"I'm looking for Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsodies #1 thru #9. Last time I bought volume 2 which starts with Rhapsody #10 in E major"

The guy was duly impressed and the older, more knowledgeable assistant quickly appeared. I put my query to him, and he answered -- with the casual air of a grocer answering "Sorry, we're out of milk" -- "Sorry we're out of Hungarian Rhapsodies at the moment". So I settled for a Rachmaninoff.