This week, Robert von Bahr, the founder and chief of the Swedish label BIS, announced that he had sold his company and its huge catalogue to Apple Music Classical. Setting aside my doubts about the latter entity, I want to take the opportunity to salute von Bahr's monumental contributions to the classical record business over the past fifty years. BIS is quite simply one of the finest labels that have ever existed. Far from merely replicating the standard repertory — though it offers magnificent documents thereof, from Masaaki Suzuki's Bach cantata survey to Osmo Vänskä's Beethoven cycle with the Minnesota Orchestra — BIS has vastly expanded listeners' horizons, particularly when it comes to twentieth- and twenty-first-century Nordic music. I think first and foremost of Neeme Järvi's traversal of the symphonies of Eduard Tubin, which stirred my teenaged soul when I encountered it in the mid-eighties. (As I've recounted often, the second movement of Tubin's Sixth was the theme music to my college-radio show, Music Since 1900. Like so many BIS recordings, it made a mighty, visceral sonic impact.) Surveys of Stenhammar, Leifs, Holmboe, and Sæverud also proved revelatory, not to mention crucial documentation of late-Soviet repertory, especially Schnittke and Gubaidulina. But the label's most titanic achievement was its 69-CD edition of the complete Sibelius, with the Lahti Symphony serving as the ensemble of choice. The Lahti cycle of the Sibelius symphonies, under Vänskä's direction, is, to my taste, the one that goes deepest into the composer's fathomless world. BIS has hardly lost energy in recent years: notable releases in 2022 and 2023 have included the staggering British pianist Paul Wee playing the Beethoven-Liszt "Eroica"; the Helsinki Chamber Choir singing Saariaho; and a Missy Mazzoli compilation titled Dark with Excessive Bright. I could go on for many more paragraphs. To cut it short: thank you, Robert von Bahr, for making our lives musically richer, even if, in the early days, we became financially poorer in the process. Who needs dinner when you can devour the chaotic early symphonies of Arvo Pärt?