The String Quartets, Alban Berg Quartet, Teldec
The String Quintets, Grumiaux Ensemble, Phillips Duo
The Violin Concertos + Sinfonia Concertante - Grumiaux, Davis, Phillips Duo
Wind Concertos, Serenades, Divertimenti - Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, DG box set
The Piano Trios + Clarinet Trio - Beaux Arts Trio, Phillips Duo
The Violin Sonatas - Haebler, Szeryng, vols 1 + 2, Phillips Duos
Solo Piano Works - Walter Klein, vols 1 + 2, Vox
The Piano Concertos - Murray Perahia, ECO, Sony box set (also available seperately I think)
The Symphonies, Trevor Pinnock, DG Arkhiv box set
Symphonies 35-41, Karl Bohm, DG Double
Le Nozze di Figaro - Giulini, EMI
Cosi Fan Tutti - Bohm, EMI
Don Giovanni - Giulini, EMI
Die Zauberflote - Otto Klemperer, EMI
Great choral works - Colin Davis, Phillips Duo
Requiem - John Eliot Gardiner, Phillips
― de, Sunday, 30 May 2004 13:30 (twenty-two years ago)
I own all these (except vol 2 of the Walter Klein) so they're my recommendations, though most of them are strongly recommended in Gramophone etc. aswell. I can give you the numbers if you need them.
Where I've indicated box sets it's because I genuinely think they're the best (performance-wise) options; try and get them in sales, like I did. Everything is medium price.
― de, Sunday, 30 May 2004 13:36 (twenty-two years ago)
replace alban berg quartett with quartetto italiano and this is about right.
add in:
clarinet concerto/clarinet quintet - david shifrin, gerard schwarz - delos
and I would take bohm's version of the requiem over gardiner's any day, regardless of tempo issues. I'd take karajan's, even.
― you will be shot (you will be shot), Sunday, 30 May 2004 23:53 (twenty-two years ago)
three years pass...
five months pass...
This is kind of a wrongheaded way of looking at/listening to classical music maybe but it's always been part of my overall experience with it: the "essential recordings," however great don't get me wrong, can be kind of intimidating - often they come with their own context/reputation (kind of in the manner of Big Unassailable Rock Albums) and then if you get to know and love them they fuse themselves to their sources in a way that's antithetical to - well, to music: pace Hongroism, there is no correct interpretation of a piece of music; there's the score, and then there's what people do with it, and the results in all their wide variation are the piece itself, which has no final form. I personally (this is a quirk I know) am always interested in the smaller non-definitive versions of things.
So, all that said, I often get the most pleasure from minor, competent, no-superstars versions of the classics. Listening this morning to Fernando Previtali conducting the Symphony Orchesstra and Chorus of Roma dell Radio-televisione Italiana in The Marriage of Figaro. Totally competent, respectable presentation that isn't swinging for the fences - just playing Mozart, which is kind of enough, you know?
― J0hn D., Wednesday, 16 April 2008 12:40 (eighteen years ago)
three years pass...
five years pass...