5 must have classical recordings

Orchestral or chamber, old or new, fast or slow, voices or no voices?

Some recommendations from my collection...all should be easily found.

1) Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade. Chicago Symphony/Reiner. RCA Living Stereo.
2) Vaughan Williams - Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, Barber - Adagio for Strings et al. Saint Louis Symphony/Slatkin. Telarc.
3) Mozart - Requiem. Arnold Scheonberg Choir/Harnoncourt. Deutsche Harmonia Mundi.
4) Soundtrack - Lord of the Rings Trilogy. Composed by Howard Shore.
5) Beethoven String Quartets. Alban Berg Quartet. EMI Classics.

Happy listening!

1-Rachmaninov Concerto No.2 Evgeny Kissin- RCA Victor Red Seal
2-Barber & Meyer Violin Concertos- Hilary Hahn-Sony.
3-Essential Verdi- 2cd's of Various artists (the worlds best!)Decca.
4-Elgar-Pomp & Circumstance Marches Symphonies 1 & 2- Virgin Classics.
5-Beethoven-Triple Concerto Mutter/Yo Yo Ma/Zeltser/Karajan-Deutsche Grammophon.

Rachmaninoff plays Rachmaninoff - concerti !!! He makes all other great pianists sound like children... It's simply a great Russian poetry...

Rubinstein plays Chopin

Romantic music of Spain - Janos Starker (cellist)

Heifets ( any recording )

Maria Callas ( mad scenes )

Thrift store vinyl is a good gateway into classical music. You can often get great stuff for practically nothing. If you don't have a turntable, it's a good excuse to get one. Classical sounds better on vinyl anyway IMO.

Issac Stern's recording of Mendelssohn's Concerto in E Minor for Violin and Orchestra and Beethoven's Two Romances with the Boston Symphony (conducted by Seiji Ozawa) is one of my favorites that I discovered that way.

I'm sure you'll get plenty of "serious" recommendations from this thread, but Wendy (formerly Walter) Carlos' Switched on Bach (Bach performed on Moog synthesizers) is great fun.

Jordi Savall performing Orlando Gibbon's "Fantasias for Viols"