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How to go about collecting Classical Music

At age 68 I’ve started to like Classical Music. It’s been mostly Jazz, Rock n Roll, and R&B up to now. I’m familiar with those genres, know their history, artists, and how to best and most economically acquire their recordings. Not so the Classical repertoire which covers a much longer time period and encompasses so many styles and forms.

What genres and/or periods of Classical music should I be exploring? I’m not looking for recommendations on particular composers or artists, only genres or periods. In Classical music there is orchestral music, chamber music, opera, church music and who knows what else to try out. Maybe you could advise me, if you wouldn’t mind, of some types to try? Or maybe you could recommend a book on the subject that would help a rookie get a start understanding what’s out there.

In buying classical music, for any one work, there may be innumerable recordings by various artists, orchestras and ensembles. How do you sort out which recordings you want in that respect. For example, I looked up Stravinsky’s Rites of Spring on Ebay last night to get some idea of pricing and what classical music available there. There were so many recordings of that work, I would have no idea how to sort out which would have been a good choice. Are there web sites where there are recommendations on which recordings are most exceptional? Or alternately, are there classical record labels you can rely on routinely to provide superior quality recordings? I’ve heard Deutsche Gramophone may be a reliable label for one, but that’s about it. Could you recommend any other labels to look for?

There seems to be a lot of Classical music in SACD format relative to Jazz or Rock n ’Roll. Is there some reason for that? Should SACD be the format of choice for purchasing Classical music, or is there good classical material in Redbook format to be found? I prefer to stay away from used vinyl due to condition issues, or new vinyl due to cost. I’m guessing the better dynamic range of CD’s lends itself to orchestral music. Is there any market for used classical SACD’s? Are there any sites you prefer to purchase your Classical CD’s, either new or used?

I grew up on Long Island. On one trip to midtown Manhattan I walked into an old church not too far from St. Patrick’s to view its’ magnificent stained glass window. Once inside I heard some equally magnificent classical organ being played. I discovered the church’s incredible organ was being played by some of New York City’s finest classical organists who would book time to practice on it. That large church was always deserted, and I went back many times for what amounted to free private concerts. I’d like to know what kind of music that was to try and replicate that experience to some degree at home, From what I’ve read here and elsewhere there surely is a plethora of other wonderful Classical music to explore and enjoy. Thanks in advance for any advice,

Mike






skyscraper
label19
36 posts
 
Sorry, Mike, I should have been more clear.  Alex Ross has a blog, therestisnoise.com.  He writes for the New Yorker and his columns are quite good (even when I disagree).  You might find him in his columns, as I do, too interested in the newest music, but he has a lot to say about the whole thing.  "The Rest is Noise", which is worth reading at the start, and "Wagnerism" (save for later, perhaps) are both recent books.  

I like Pristine because the restorations he provides by himself, Mark Obert-Thorn, and others, make historic performances much more listenable --- best of both worlds.

I also recommend, rather than narrowing in on a few composers, just listen to a lot of different stuff and see where your ear takes you.  I recall you're averse to streaming, but here it's where it's your friend.  For $15 you can get the Berliner Phil digital concert hall for a month and just plow through their archives.  You can also hear a lot of stuff on youtube.  
One fun thing to do with it is to compare different artists in the same piece.  I recorded off of youtube a playlist of performances of Stormy Weather.  Of course youtube will never be your go-to source, but to build experience, learn new stuff, you can't beat the price.  And there are some things there that I haven't found elsewhere, like the Bostridge-Drake performance of Schubert's Winterreise.  

OK: Winterreise - One more thing.  It is easy to overinvest in the orchestral and concerto literature to the neglect of smaller ensembles, chamber music and solo performance.  Schubert's Winterreise and his C major quintet are ahead of the big symphonies on my desert island list.  Some nights you just don't have the energy for another big bash; also the big orchestral standards are sufficiently ubiquitous that the ear is  quickly jaded.  But the non-orchestral literature is so voluminous that it is hard to know where to start.  Beethoven wrote only 9 symphonies, but he wrote 32 piano sonatas and 16 string quartets.  And the best of these  are just as deep, as dramatic, as totally engrossing, as the best of the orchestral works.

Have fun!
skyscraper OP
831 posts
 
Two leftears, I’ll take a look at the youtube video, hopefully tonight. Thank you for the link to it. Just by chance Beethoven’s "Eroica" is one of the dozen or so classical albums I do have, It’s a version recorded by the Berlin Philharmonic, Director Karl Bohm on Deutsche Grammophon-Resonance, bought for my wife many years ago. So I’ll even have a reference after watching the video. To be truthful I can’t remember ever having listened to it myself. What a disgrace, huh. At least you all are helping mend my ways before it’s too late. Take care,

Label19, thanks for writing back. I’ll see if the local library system has either of those two books in it’s catalog, and I’ll find those blogs. I would like to get a variety of classical works in all settings as you suggest. I’d like to get some more complete works sets like the Bach one just ordered to hear a composers work in all it’s various forms which should be interesting. Maybe next month I can get another set. Appreciate all you thoughtful suggestions. You know I haven't seen the New Yorker or the NY Times for so long its almost surprising hearing you reference them like a New Yorker would, and that they're still around being read. Makes me kind of nostalgic. 

Mike

label19
36 posts
 
Yep, the Times and the New Yorker are still here, although less well-written than they used to be; and what's the point of the New Yorker if not the writing.  Ross is an exception.  (I don't live in NYC, btw.  I'm an upstater, and we, being completely irrational, think the only thing wrong with NYS is NYC.  But my wife lives down there and we commute.)  And to round out the big 3, I'll mention that a recent issue of the New York Review had an appreciation of Charles Rosen's writings.  Much fun to read.

I'm writing though, because I thought of one more good resource:
https://theclassicreview.com/category/beginners-guides/
I did some due diligence here, and read the entries on Brahms, Tschaikovsky, and Schubert.  I like them because they span the oeuvre, the big pieces, chamber and solo.  In these single-composer entries they list 10 pieces that, they claim, will give you a feel for the work.  You really can't argue with the choices.  They also recommend recordings, and there is nothing wrong about those they recommend that I'm familiar with.  (In particular, how smart to choose Carlos Kleiber for the Brahms 4.  I don't know anyone who knows this recording and doesn't put this recording at the top of their list although Audiogon, being Audiogon, will now find me a few.)
larryi
4,058 posts
 
label 19,

I agree with you completely about not overlooking chamber and other smaller works of any composer.  While symphonies and concertos paid the rent, a lot of composers felt more free to be inventive and not worry about public appeal when they composed such works.  I too, particularly like Schubert's Winterreise (I have nine versions on CD and a couple more on lp) and other song cycles and his quartets and quintets.  One of my all-time favorite pieces is his D. 956 string quintet.  If all he composed was what he did in the last year of his life, he would still rank among the best composers of all time.  Of all the Beethoven recordings I have, I listen most frequently to his late quartets and his sonatas for violin and piano.  For Brahms, as magnificent as are his Symphonies and piano and violin concerti, I think my favorite single recording is a set of Chorlieder (Kolner Kammerchor/Peter Neumann).

It's really hard to even suggest a path for discovering favorite music because it is so hard to predict what will catch anyone's fancy.  Someone in my office asked me to bring in some selections for him to get started with classical music.  On a hunch, I included something that is somewhat out in left field, and it turned out to be what he liked the most; it is a recording of Harry Partch's "Delusions of the Fury."
jd3939
1 posts
 

Many great responses here. I am interested in classical music and like yourself also like physical media. I am much younger than most posting here (29 years old), but also see the utility of not having emails, scrolling habits, screen glare distracting from the listening experience. Liner notes are also extremely useful for getting some background to the works.

As mentioned by others, “classical music” is a broad and almost useless term, though intuitively we all know what we are talking about. There’s so much under that umbrella term that if someone says they don’t like classical music then they simply haven’t been exposed because there’s literally something for everyone.

I agree that ‘redbook’ CD or SACD is the way to go for physical media. Although there is a tremendous amount of music released on hybrid SACD (can be played on standard CD player, reading only redbook layer), most classical physical releases are simply redbook CDs. Personally, I just buy what I want to hear and don’t worry about SACD vs RBCD difference. I will say, it gets frustrating for someone like myself who doesn’t have an SACD transport, but wants to play physical media and still get HiRes quality. The industry simply isn’t there for us non megarich consumers.

When thinking about classical music everyone thinks of the baroque period, classical period, and romantic period. There’s a joyous treasury of music outside of this, including renaissance and medieval music, modern music, “world music”, electronic art music, other meaningless labels that extend beyond the reach of what most people think of classical music, but demand the same attentive listening stance as classical music.

The website Prestomusic has a “record of the week” column that may be useful for you in terms of discovery. If you find something you like read about similar artists and branch out from there! For me, that is one of the joys of physical media – reading the contributing artists and picking up their work.

I know you didn’t ask for specifics but I have been enjoying:

21st century music:
A Far Cry – The Law of Mosaics – brilliant recording of Andrew Norman’s “The Companion Guide to Rome”
Hughes Dufourt – L’Afrique d’apres Tiepolo, L’Asie d’apres Tiepolo
Toshio Hosokawa – Gardens

Classical:
Mozart – Violin Sonatas – Isabelle Faust and Alexander Melkinov

Baroque:
Sean Shibe – Bach Lute Suites on Classical Guitar
Rachel Podger and Brecon Baroque – Bach’s Art of Fugue

Early Music:
La Morte Della Ragione – Il Giardino Armonico


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