Classical music is alive and well on SACD
You are right that the market for classical is limited. Sales of 5000 (that's right, five-thousand) discs are considered very good! Despite this, there's no shortage of fine recordings out there on redbook CD. There is also a growing catalog of
superbly recorded multichannel discs. While the catalog is not as broad as anyone would like, there is a wealth of new and well performed music out there.
CHANNEL CLASSICS
Channel Classics web site produces uniformly superb discs. A brief list of their many fine releases:
Love & Lament - Monteverdi et al choral music
Mozart Requiem
Rachmaninoff Symph #2 (Ivan Fischer, Budapest Festival orchestra)
M. Ravel - Retrospection - Dejan Lazic, piano
Telemann, Tafelmusik - Florilegium
Numerous other fine discs/labels are out there including:
HYPERION
Rachmaninoff piano concertos - Stephen Hough - Dec 2004 on SACD
SFO
San Francisco Symphony Orchestra's private label (Harmonia Mundi distributes it)
Mahler's Symph 1 - Michael Tilson Thomas / SFO
San Francisco Symph Orchestra web site
DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON
Organ Transcriptions / Oliver Latry - true demonstration quality disc
So, support your classic music artists. Buy, don't burn, your music. And go out and find some great SACD material. If consumers don't catch on, it will wither on the vine.