The very best Sibelius recordings in analog

@schubert I wish I said what you did! Tchaikovsky under Mravinsky is The Only one for me! The only contender is the vision of Pierre Monteaux: the beauty without mental breakdown... Sibelius 2nd under Monteaux on King Super Analog is my favorite, but, as you said, my genes frame me!...

My single recommendation is Dylana Jensen playing the Violin Concerto with Ormandy conducting.  RCA label.  Her magnum opus.  Actually everything about this is recording is great; Her instrument (a violin on loan - sad story about that for another day), Ormandy's tempo's, engineering balance between soloist and orchestra.

In fact you can not think without language , and tend to think in same MANNER as those who share their native tongue .

Disagree.  You can prove this to yourself by doing some mental arithmetic or calculating a few moves ahead in chess.  Playing squash is fast tempo and 3 dimensional - you wont get going if you are verbalising. 

If the brain could not speak you would not be playing chess or squash .
Nor would either exist .

I strongly agree with Schubert’s premise re the connection between the spoken language of a culture and its music and music making. This is something that is well documented and analyzed in musicology. Of course (and only as one example) an American conductor can bring certain interpretative elements to Russian music that render it great or even "perfect" to a given listener. However, there is no doubt in my mind that in many cases (not all, obviously) a Russian (again, only as an example) conductor can sometimes bring something to the music that eludes conductors who don’t have the depth of understanding of the culture and language that the Russian conductor might. Just two examples based on personal experience (for whatever it may worth):

As an orchestral saxophonist I have played Mussorgsky’s (Ravel) "Pictures At An Exibition" and Rachmaninov’s "Symphonic Dances" more times than I can remember; including the Rachmaninov with the American orchestra that the work was written for and who premiered it. There have been several fine and memorable performances of the two works. However, it wasn’t until I had the privilege of playing "Pictures" under Gergiev and "Symphonic Dances" with the St. Petersburg under Temirkanov that I "got" those works and understood what had been missing in the somewhat sanitized renditions that I had either heard or been part of with American orchestras and conductors. There were stylistic and phrasing details that got to the core of the music in very convincing ways; the music made sense on a deeper level.

Case # 1 for music is difference between French and German classical music which been expounded upon for a least a century.
I’ve read several times that some conductors won’t touch "Symphonic Dances" for that  reason . 
I'd like to hear JoAnn Falletta  give it a shot myself .

Not a few think part of reason that Sibelius is so beloved by Finns ( what other composers birthday is a National Holiday) is that his native tongue was Swedish, and as a perfectionist, he studied Finnish in a way few Finns ever did.
He said he knew he was a true Finn when he started to dream in it .


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