Thanks for the info. Speaking of Ormandy, spinning this and the music is new to me. Do you have these works?
No. I only have some Bach Greatest Hits, Wagner, Rimsky-Korsakov and Rachmaninoff CD singles by Ormandy. I only bought his Sibelius box a few weeks ago at a very good price from across the pond. I can literally count on one hand how many LP recordings I have since I never cared for the Columbia press quality ... There are not that many new Ormandy CD singles out there. I heard Sony has released a mega mono box, which I have zero interests ...
Yes, he did; not only did he compose it, he led a recording of it with the Liverpool PO and the Huddersfield Choral Soc., issued in the United States as RCA Victor set DM 974 (5 12" 78 RPM disks, 10 sides). [edit] This recording dates to 1943. A little digging reveals that Walton in 1959 rerecorded the piece for a stereo LP.
I really like the recordings I have of Chorzempa. His Saint Saens Organ Symphony recording is great. In fact, this is my go to Organ Sym.
Chorzempa is an excellent organist and also a good harpsichordist. Unfortunately, the WTC twofer is a bit of a turnoff as there are tracks performed on organ, harpsichord and fortepiano. I was expecting only harpsichord performance ...
I have not heard his take on the variations but have read the reviews of it and it gets high marks. I may have to seek it out. I have a couple of versions.
For those who are interested in streaming classical music, one of my colleagues at TNT-Audio reviewed a classical-only streaming service called Primephonic in today's issue: [Review] Primephonic streaming service He refers to a recording that sounds interesting: one Jean Guillou playing a modern pedal piano in his own music and some of Liszt, Mozart, Schumann, and Bach. Alas, I checked Amazon, and the sole copy I could find was more than $900. Ouch!
I heard him a couple of times in recital and greatly enjoyed his playing. He was especially good as a Bach pianist. Sad to think he's gone now.
Hi David, I am a huge fan of his father, but never heard his work. So many pianists, so little shelf space . . .
Hi, George, Time for a bigger apartment? Of course, you'd still be subject to the law of physics stating, "The number of recordings always expands to exceed the shelf space available."
By the way, kidding aside, some of those Price-Les$ budget discs from back around the turn of the aughts offer up interesting material, some of it drawn from old masters or concert tapes that presumably were cheap to license. For example, among the handful in my collection are one with a recital by Annie Fischer including Schumann's Fantasy in C and Kreisleriana and another of Furtwangler leading the VPO in the Bruckner 4th sym. It's always tempting, when confronted with ultra-cheap issues, to turn up the old nose, but on occasion real gems can be found in very plain settings. As a collector friend puts it, "You take your great music-making where you find it."
The original recordings are really not very good quality, so to me, this issue is at best a cash grab. The playing is great. Horowitz's Chopin can be variable, but here it is quite good.