Great MONO recordings

Well, my favorite mono opera LP has to be the 1935 performance of the 1st act of Die Walkure on Angel's Great Recording series.
How's this for voices: Lotte Lehmann, Emanuel List, Lauritz Melchior, Alfred Jerger, Ella Flesch
Conductor: Bruno Walter
Orchestra/Ensemble: Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Solo Piano: Dinu Lipatti - Chopin Waltzes

Orchestral: hard to choose but the Reiner performance of Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra is better than the famous stereo version.

Just picked up a minty copy of Mingus' "Mingus Dynasty". Outstanding music and sonics.

Try pretty much any symphonic recording conducted by Arturo Toscanini. The performances are so captivating you won't pay any attention to the primitive sonics.

I particularly like his 1940 recording of the Brahms 1st. I have it on a set of Victor 78's, but you can find it transcribed to compressed digital form here.

Regards,
-- Al

Thanks Almarg, IMHO Toscanini's Saint Saens Organ Symphony is my favorite of them all, sonics notwithstanding. (Though sonics far from horrible!) The fleet Scherzo is for once captivating, (Paray gets the Scherzo right, too) and the finale has just the perfect blend of excitement and grandeur; others IMHO are either too grand (lumbering) or too exciting, (texture/polyphony gets "flattened").

Some of Toscanini's later recordings actually sound fairly decent - Pines and Fountains of Rome and Pictures at an Exhibition, for example. Great performances too.

Dave