My favorite classical recordings

I concur. Now when I listen to Haydn, Mozart, Schubert or even Beethoven sometimes, I’m turned off by the older, heavier less HIP conceptions.  
And of course the Baroque has seen an enlightenment for some time now.

I put my recordings of HIP music into the closet with my hair shirts.  I must admit that I’ve never liked the overscored, over produced, recordings of orchestral music. I welcomed Harnoncourt’s Beethoven, Berglund’s Sibelius, Mackerras’ Schubert and Brahms. What I found I loved the most was not HIP so much as the reduced forces and the clarity it brought. But, that probably explains why I love music for the solo piano and piano duets. Go figure. :-)

RV, I really don’t have a favorite that I don’t stray from often. But I do have a love for Puccini’s La Boheme by Shippers that has never diminished, and I have grown to appreciate Jean-Efflam Bavouzet’s Debussy series. They are my go-to recordings of this music now.

FWIW, and I realize it may be a bit off topic, but in a prior post you referred to crying for the love of the first movement of Mahler’s 9th. Something I can appreciate and it occurs occasionally to me, just nothing of Mahler’s so much. What, who, actually does exactly this for me is a ’pop’ singer, Eva Cassidy. If you are not acquainted with her, but appreciate a great voice and can abide something not ’classical’ in our sense, you should listen to her. She died young and unappreciated in her early 30’s, but was later discovered in England (she’s from Appalachia). Her songs are so, so, beautiful and full of heart. I cry just thinking about her and I save her music for those times when I’m emotionally prepared to hear her. It’s that exquisite, for me at least. Just hear her ’Over the Rainbow’ juxtaposed to the perennial favorite version by Judy Garland. I could go on, she really winds me up! :-)

Newbee,

I discovered Eva Cassidy a long time ago. And you’re right.  I could never listen to her without tears coming to my eyes, notwithstanding her early death.  
Like the new Dodger’s baseball pitcher, she could do it all.  No matter what style she sang she was the best at it.

Extraordinary!

The early HIP recordings, particularly Harnoncourt Merry Band, could be a trial to listen to due to the steely string tone , squawks obes, and the tempos that sounded as though everyone was taking crystal meth.  The dogma espoused by the HIP crowd was also hard to take.  Now we have had several generations to master historically informed instruments, many musicians have a music stand in both camps, and the tempos are by and large more realistic, allowing the music to breathe.  I still wince when a superbly played piece of music hits a patch of squally string tone, but those moments are now outliers, for the most part.

Rachmaninoff “Variations on a theme of Paganini”. Federova, among many others.

To my mind, one of the most brilliant compositions ever written.