I would actually go with Lloyd Jones on Naxos for the symphonies. You really can't go wrong with the symphonic poems by Lloyd Jones as well and many of the poems are coupled with the symphonies. It looks like you can get them used for under a buck on Amazon. Keep in mind, Bax's symphonies IMO tend to meander somewhat and are disjointed at times. I think the way to start is a disc of his Tone Poems and maybe the 6th Symphony.
RRB- I recently bought La Mer and enjoyed it. I also love listening to the Debussy Complete work 33 CD set (on Spotify).
My father (and all of his kin), as well as my mother, had me growing up on Country & Western music. There was not a classical recording in sight. (I still love '60, '70, and early '80s country, by the way.) I became hooked on rock in the late '70s as my older cousins would play Beatles, KISS, Heart, Zep and various other rock gods. Still, there wasn't a classical record played. In the early '80s Prince's music snagged me, and then I needed to hear all of this funk, R&B and Soul. No classical. In 1986 I saw the film Amadeus. Say what you will about the film, but it portrayed a really hip dude from the 1700s, making him seem a bit like a rock star in his time, The music, though, was thoroughly sublime, and it helped that I bought into the little man who was a mouthpiece for god's songs. This was also the year of Metallica's Master of Puppets. People were saying Metallica was so fast and heavy. I was like, "Wait! This Mozart is just as fast, and just as heavy! It's only a difference in instruments." One day I decided to sit down with my guitar and learn every part of K.361's Adagio. I then recorded parts on a 4-track, mixed those to one track, leaving me three more tracks, and so on, until I had the whole pieces laid down with electric guitar, really sustaining those notes to mimic the woodwinds, messing with the guitar's tone knobs to voice the different textures of oboes, clarinets, etc. When I was done, at that moment I realized how complex classical music was, and that rock, pop, blues, funk, whatever, no matter how fantastic the melodies, was a stripped down version of what classical music provided. From there I simply dove in head first. I didn't abandon Prince, or the Beatles, or Metallica, or Beastie Boys, but for every album I bought in the "pop" genre, I would pick up some classical cat, like Chopin, Sibelius, JS Bach...and then on to Debussy, Philip Glass, Biber, and on and on...until I met this dude at a music store (the old baritone who knew way more about classical than anybody I've ever met), and then it snowballed further. I could go on, but I won't. Needless to say, there are moments when I was a musical snack, and then there are those moments where I want a musical meal. Classical always provides the meal.
(CD Deutsche Grammophon "Musikfest" German Press 429 153-2) 1990 .... recorded 1964 .... Karajan in his prime with an unpretentious view on Brahms ....
First listen to CD 13 from "The Choir Of St. John's College Cambridge - The Complete Argo Recordings" directed by George Guest on Decca. "Victoria - Requiem Mass"
First listen to a new arrival, "Monteverdi - Il Ritorno D'Ulisse In Patria" performed by La Venexiana directed by Claudio Cavina on Glossa.
Mine was Stravinsky's Histoire du Soldat, in 1971. I have written about it in a book about Stravinsky that will be published in October this year.
I started listening to classical music from an early age -at least six- as Pop was a member of the Concert Hall Record Club so we had many fine stereo records that went beyond say Chopin or Tchaikovsky Ballets to the dizzy heights of Mahler and Bruckner that he played originally on a stereo console and as time went on toward separates that sounded better. One side effect was the rekkid club did stereo 7 inch 33's of short pieces like Haydn's Trumpet Concerto or Beethoven overtures which were gifted to me as I sat listening enraptured his 'big' classical records and it wasn't long before I was in my teens buying classical lps and taping concerts off the radio of major works with the first being a recording of Rimsky's Scheherazade a used copy of the British HMV Concert Classics recording by Kletzki and the Philharmonia that I have on cd now having been introuduced to it around ten
Friday grand performances... Boccherini, L.Various works Decca 438 377-2 2cd set 1993 Okay my copy got Deccaized by some kind person at Decca even though it says in the booklet in small print "This compilation (c) 1993 Philips Classics Production" and these performances are ones you'd never associate with Decca which really irritates when it was those Philips people who came up with this compilation of mainly whole works that actually works as a introduction to this composer who is neglected on record. We get two Guitar Quintets, the B Flat Cello Concerto, Symphonies 3 and 5, the String Quartet in D and the infamous Minuet from the String Quintet in E all on two discs in great performances. Just under two and half hours of bliss!
I bought that box a month or so after it came out and it still has the shrink wrap on it. I have too many boxes
BTW, for the European participants of this thread, it appears this box may only be available on Amazon Germany as download. Physical CD's will not be available ...
Available off the Atlantic on cd: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sisters-Ka...id=1519399519&sr=1-1&keywords=sisters+box+set
I did not check Amazon UK but it does not look like it has any price advantage over what is available on Amazon US ...
So far, I cannot find on the internet how this... differs from this... In the old days I'd have assumed them to be completely different (Decca vs. DG), but that was then and now it is today. Anybody have the inside scoop?
