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Classical Music for Aficionados

I would like to start a thread, similar to Orpheus’ jazz site, for lovers of classical music.
I will list some of my favorite recordings, CDs as well as LP’s. While good sound is not a prime requisite, it will be a consideration.
  Classical music lovers please feel free to add to my lists.
Discussion of musical and recording issues will be welcome.

I’ll start with a list of CDs.  Records to follow in a later post.

Berlioz: Symphonie Fantastique.  Chesky  — Royal Phil. Orch.  Freccia, conductor.
Mahler:  Des Knaben Wunderhorn.  Vanguard Classics — Vienna Festival Orch. Prohaska, conductor.
Prokofiev:  Scythian Suite et. al.  DG  — Chicago Symphony  Abbado, conductor.
Brahms: Symphony #1.  Chesky — London Symph. Orch.  Horenstein, conductor.
Stravinsky: L’Histoire du Soldat. HDTT — Ars Nova.  Mandell, conductor.
Rachmaninoff: Symphonic Dances. Analogue Productions. — Dallas Symph Orch. Johanos, cond.
Respighi: Roman Festivals et. al. Chesky — Royal Phil. Orch. Freccia, conductor.

All of the above happen to be great sounding recordings, but, as I said, sonics is not a prerequisite.


128x128rvpiano
schubert
7,386 posts
 
The only one I ever had was a EMI "Great Artists of the Century"


King’s College Cambridge with the

ever reliable Willcocks .Never needed another .


Can't put my hands on it  but easy to Amazon it .
Merry Christmas  to You and Yours .


















schubert
7,386 posts
 
Jim , I've never heard anyone else say that about  "the Lark Ascending " .
I  myself have over 50 Vaughn Williams , to each his own .
twoleftears's avatar
twoleftears
5,318 posts
 

Jim, please, please try listening to V-W's Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus.  If that doesn't win you over, nothing will.

The problem with The Lark is that it's pretty instantly appealing, and so it gets trotted out overly frequently and hence becomes a chestnut.  A moratorium of a few years would help a lot.

Bruckner; I'm a Mahler fanatic and also a sucker for slow movements.  Hence 7, 8, and 9 rank high in my personal pantheon.

twoleftears's avatar
twoleftears
5,318 posts
 

So I listened to Mariam Batsashvili's CD of transcriptions.

Music: I'm no expert, but the pianism seemed really excellent.

Sound: the timbre of the piano was very natural and entirely credible.

But... the audiophile in me had a problem with the soundstage.  There was no sense of the room, the space, the acoustic, in which the piano was being played.  If I had to guess, I'd say it was miked very close up.  I tried to get a sense of the perspective from which we were supposed to be listening to the recital.  For some of the time, it seemed as if the perspective was more or less looking at the piano/pianist head-on, so that the lower register tended to the right speaker and the upper to the left.  But then this would collapse or even flip in another passage.  Hmmm.

jim204
881 posts
 
@twoleftears    You are absoloutely right about the exagerated width of th piano , I listen to more and more disks each year with severe perspective problems. I don't notice it too much on my setup as I use phones but I do when I go to my pals house and we listen to his conventional system , it seems that the signal has you looking straight on to the keys and the keyboard is eight foot wide, " I don't like that ". I like BIS piano recordings best because they have a massive dynamic range and you have the best seat in the house. lf you want to hear piano et it's best today I suggest you go to the BIS catalogue and listen to Yevgeny Sudbin's solo work especially his Scarlatti Sonatas. I shall also chastise my self for my outburst about VaughanWilliams because if truth be told there are lots of less competent composers that him and I'm afraid all after Shostakovitch fall into that category, that's my thoughts and I don't expect anyone to agree with me.
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