classical music WHITHER the piano recital? Is the concert devoted exclusively to piano music at risk of becoming an endangered species? If so, there are those, for sure, who will not object.

Many music lovers find an evening of unremitting music for the grand piano a bit weighty on the ears. There are those who will go out of their way to let you know that, to their delicate sense of hearing, the sound of a string quartet, or the caress of a human voice, is infinitely preferable to the continuous clatter of the old 88.

Me? Piano music is, always was, and always will be, a drug. Can't have enough of it. No such thing as an overdose. At exactly this time last year I drove around Scotland like a groupie, following the piano duet team of Tony Goldstone and Caroline Clemmow (I heard something like nine or 10 concerts in all), singing dementedly as I criss-crossed Scotland: ''There's only one thing better than a pianist playing piano music; and that's two pianists playing piano music.'' I guess it's just what you were brought up on.

Seriously, for serial addicts of piano music, it is an inexhaustible delight. The repertoire is without horizon, ranging from the Baroque masters through the classical giants of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, with their dozens of piano sonatas. Then came the Romantics with sonatas, studies, preludes, mazurkas and myriad new, smaller (and larger) forms of composition. The permutations of repertoire are infinite: time was a piano recital would start with a cool, classical palate-cleanser, before charging into the headier regions of the Romantics, with their excesses perhaps offset by a touch of pungency from percussive Bartok or Prokofiev (not that many mainstream pianists ventured far beyond the orthodox).

Traditional formats of structuring piano recitals have pretty well be found in the programme (especially if a convenient pattern of thematic logic), is fair game. Even if there is no thematic logic, then that becomes the raison d'etre of the programme.

Alternatively, some pianists invert or turn inside out traditional methods of structuring a programme. Last week Steven Osborne began with some unusually wild Brahms, followed it with music by the old roue and high priest of Romanticism, Franz Liszt, then settled down to some rather more cool, lyrical, late Schubert to close the concert. This week Graeme McNaught began with flamboyant Chopin, then worked his way towards the beautiful objectivity of Ravel via James MacMillan's chilliest modernism. In early December, Osborne will be back with another recital, in which the entire programme will be given over to a single work by the late French master, Olivier Messiaen, a work which contains 20 separate movements and requires two CDs to accommodate its expanse in a recorded version. Anything goes, it would seem.

So is all well in the obviously flexible, versatile world of the piano recital? Not really. Sometimes, for those of us who are hopelessly addicted to the idiom and the species, it can be the damnd'st thing just finding a piano recital to go to.

Of course, it depends when you look at the calendar. Like everything else, the availability of piano recitals goes in cycles; and, like most other things, it's either one extreme or the other - feast or famine. Earlier this year, there were two top-drawer 60th birthday recitals given in Glasgow by the great British pianist John Lill. At one of these a colleague remarked that he couldn't remember when he'd last seen a piano recital on the fixtures, other than at special events, such as the Edinburgh Festival.

At this precise moment, the situation is not too bad, which is what throws the issue into relief. As I said, in the past fortnight we've had recitals by two top Scots pianists, Steven Osborne and Graeme McNaught. Osborne will be back soon.

Before the end of the year, the barnstorming Mancunian Peter Donohoe will arrive in Scotland to play the music of Sir Arthur Bliss with that of Sir Michael Tippett (a hair-raising combination), while Georgian pianist Marina Nadiradze, prize-winner in the Scottish International Piano Competition, and effectively a local girl now, will give a couple of recitals.

Also, at the end of this month, and from the absolute top of the heap, perhaps the greatest-living Bach pianist, Angela Hewitt, will give a recital of Bach and French music in Edinburgh.

So it looks not too bad at the moment. But it will all be gone like a whiff of breeze by the end of the year. Why? Because there is no consistent supply and no linkage between any of the events. They are all individual promotions - by Westbourne Music, the RSAMD, the universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, and the Usher Hall. There is no plan, no strategy, no tactical approach. So the effect is like throwing small pebbles into a big pool: tiny ripples, no waves.

Scotland is such a small country you would think it would be a manageable exercise for different but similarly-inclined bodies to sit down together and see if their separate efforts might usefully be combined - planning, co-ordination, presentation, marketing and so on - to mutual benefit.

Far more people should

have turned out than did to

hear the superb Graeme McNaught. And how many will turn up in December for Steven Osborne's Messiaen marathon? Not as many as should, I'll

wager. Get together, and get the word out about all these events. Let this be a start. Save your local piano recital.