Classical Corner Classical Music Corner (thread #9)

Piggy backing oiff RRB's Vaughan Williams....

Now Playing my fav Vaughan Williams from my collection....long OOP
It got Penguin Guide Rosette Award x2 back when I got it in 1989.

Edge is Marked "English String Music - The London Chamber Orchestra"

 

As S9 is now the only symphony I have yet to listen to on these two cycles.





It is time to listen to CD1 from this redone Abbado cycle ...

 

Playing the 'Eroica' and 4 th Beethoven Symphonie from the mighty Sir Charles Mackerras / Scottish Philhramonic Chamber Music Orchestra set from 2007. A wonderful strong,dynamic detailed always melodic reading- superb... Before I was taken to a state of trance by these metaphysical precious Bach fuges exercised perfectly by one of the world's best string quartets ! The Emerson String Quartet !!!! A must have addition to any good collection.

Speaking of Beethoven and preparing a new order.
These two Beethoven sets unknown so far caught my attention. One for the hpghly praised name of this awesome piano player from Cologne Michael Kortstick who finished his Beethoven cycle with this SACD and a 7 no 8 Cd symphonic SACD set for unbelievable 9.95 (oops).

Any ideas ?

 

BTW I think got the Eroica from that Cluyten set (from LP). Nice one.

 

Great RVW disc. I still have mine too.

 

Now playing CD5 from this set - the 12 Etudes ...

 

I have had the Bach CD by the Emerson String Quartet for a while. While I normally prefer baroque works to be performed on period instruments, ESQ put in a spectacular virtuoso performance that I cannot quibble with.

 

Just added these 2 CD's to a new MDT order ...

 

Shifting gear, now playing CD13 from this set - 47 CD's to go ...

 

Now playing:

Dvořák: Slavonic Dances op. 46 & 72, Szell / Cleveland Orch. (Sony SBK 48 161)

 

I think I would go for one a week. You could finish by next year, Stuart.

 

I think I can do 2 or 3 CD's a week, mainly on the weekend. Weeknights are too short.

 

Can you say for sure yet if they're your favorite cantatas?

 

Curious......

How many Classical Cd's do people own here?
Also how long and how serious a collector are you Guys?

On and off Collector since 1988...I get on a binge now and then.
I have 161 and will be close to 170 by weeks end.
I have about a dozen 2+ Cd sets out of that 161.

 

Norwegian star

Now playing:

• Sibelius: Violin Concerto, Humoresques + Prokofiev: Violin Concerto No. 1 - Vilde Frang; Thomas Søndergård/WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln [EMI Classics 2010, new release -- a must for fans of the Sibelius VC, outstanding!]

 

I probably have 300-400 classical CDs, down from 1,000+ some years ago. I was moving once, and I decided to act on the fact that I only listen to certain versions of most pieces of music. My obsession is more about finding the one right version than having an assortment. Of course, it takes a lot of buying to determine those one right versions.

But I have more CDs (and LPs) than that, as I don't listen exclusively to classical music.

 

Including some mega box sets....about 1,000. Never really counted. I do know that there seems an endless amount of cds that I still want to hear. After a while it becomes a library in the sense that I probably will run out of time before music, but it is fantastic having what you want to hear at your fingertips when you want to hear it.

 

I have 2180 Classical CDs.

I have been collecting classical about ten years.

 

Me neither, till today.

I fully agree. At some point I realized that I will never have everything I want, so I just try to buy the stuff I am most interested in now and wait till later for the other stuff. I have an amazon wishlist that's 18 pages long. However, I have slowed my buying this past year, mostly because I have so many CDs that I love and each new one takes time away from my favorites. So I only add special stuff these days.

I am still in the process of switching back to the way things were when I got started with classical music - spending 95% of my free time listening to music and maybe 5% of my time hunting for it. It's embarrassing how far the scales had tipped in the other direction.

 

I have around 5,000. Have been collecting for 20 years.

Nuts heh!

 

Sounds like I'm right on track.

 

I try to these days but I have a love for New Age/World/Synth Music also.
I have about 90 of those on Cd.

Enya,Dead Can Dance,Pete Bardens,William Orbit,Vangelis,Patrick Moraz,Michael Hoenig,Michale Dana,Hearts Of Space label stuff,ect

 

I have slowed down to around one or two a month. I had to ask myself, just how many performances of one symphony or piano piece do I need to listen to? Can that new Beethoven Ninth really be much better than the other twenty I have? I finally realized the error of my ways and stopped buying like a lunatic. Have to stop reading reviews also.

 

Keeping track on the computer of what I have is part of the fun for me.
I lost a Cd Set and have yet to find it.....has me really miffed!
I pride myself in taking top notch care of my Cd's and as much fuss in organizing them.

My program.

 

Did you ever read this?

SEVEN PHASES IN THE LIFE OF A HARD-CORE COLLECTOR by David Hurwitz

Do You Recognize Yourself Here?
I’m sure that some of you have seen that famous little poster called “The Six Phases of a Project?” In case this escaped your attention until now, these are: (1) enthusiasm; (2) disillusionment; (3) panic; (4) search for the guilty; (5) punishment of the innocent; (6) praise and honors for the non-participants. It occurred to me recently that the life of a typical hard-core classical music record collector might be similarly categorized, and so I modestly propose the following:

Phase 1: Discovery. This is the most wonderful time of all, when the world seems full of an almost limitless number of masterpieces crying for your attention. The only constraint on your enthusiasm is your pocketbook, and you do whatever you can to purchase as much as possible as quickly as possible.

Phase 2: Expansion. You notice that the same music sounds different in different performances, and so you begin collecting multiple versions of your favorite works and start to get a sense for which artists offer interpretations that are most to your liking. You smile knowingly when friends and family members ask the perfectly logical question: Why do you need 15 different recordings of Mahler’s Second Symphony? Foolish people!

Phase 3: Fandom. Your taste in various performers leads you to fixate on one or two (or more) who you believe hold the key to indisputable artistic greatness. Now instead of purchasing multiple recordings of the same music, you’re after multiple recordings of the same music by the same artist at different periods (sometimes only a few days apart). You begin looking for pirate air-checks, private recordings, every scrap you can get your hands on, no matter if it sounds awful and your idol might have had a really bad day. You MUST have it anyway. You find great signficance in relatively tiny interpretive differences from one performance to the next.

The next four phases are not necessarily the inevitable outcomes of the first three, and not every hard-core collector experiences all of them, but most eventually manage at least one or two.

Phase 4: Nostalgia. This is a transitional phase: now comes that terrifying moment when you feel that you’ve heard it all. You’ve mastered the basic repertoire and know all of the great performers, those you like and those you don’t, and have reached the dreaded Great Works Saturation Point. What’s missing in your life is the thrill of discovery: that first flush of enthusiasm for each masterpiece as it first sounded when you originally encountered it.

Phase 5: Crusade. Happily salvation is at hand, in the form of dozens of fine independent labels specializing in all sorts of repertoire niches just waiting to be explored. There are two principal dangers with this phase (not including possible bankruptcy). The first is the inevitable and chronic lack of shelf space, a difficulty avoided as you make your first trips to that fabulous musical safety-valve, the used CD shop. The second danger is the tendency, similar to what happens in phase 3 above, to make exaggerated claims for music that really isn’t all that special or interesting just because its novelty excites your fancy. People will look at you strangely as you vigorously try to defend the assertion that Havergal Brian was England’s greatest composer, Sorabji a genius, or that Beethoven was a musical pygmy compared to Ferdinand Ries. This phase can go on for years, with literally thousands of discs passing through a typical collector’s hands in an endless crusade for that Holy Grail of classical music: the neglected masterpiece. If you seriously believe that the “three Bs” means Bax, Boughton, and Bach (W.F. of course!), then you’ve gone too far, and it’s really time to move on to Phase 6.

Phase 6: Renewal. One day, as you look through the letter B in your carefully alphabetized collection, you see those 40 or 50 Beethoven cycles that you haven’t touched in months, or even years. Playing the symphonies, just for old time’s sake, you’re stunned to realize that they truly are light years better than the second rate novelties that have constituted your main musical diet lately. So you move on to Brahms, Mozart, Handel, Mahler, Haydn, Bach, even (gasp!) Tchaikovsky, and Richard Strauss. It’s as if you’re hearing them all for the first time--and how alive, how refreshing they all sound! You fall in love with the great classics all over again, and you realize that the judgment of history isn’t always wrong. They don’t call ‘em “warhorses” for nothing!

Phase 7: Maturity. If you’re lucky, you may get this far. You realize that it’s not necessary to own 50 Beethoven cycles, 46 of which you never play, when you can be just as happy with 20 of them, 16 of which you never play. The complete harmonium music of Siegfried Karg-Elert, that Bulgarian Mahler cycle, 20 or 30 Gregorian Chant collections, six copies of the same historical recording reissued on six different labels in marginally varying (terrible) sound quality, your cherished 12 CD box containing pirate recordings of Sviatislav Richter’s “legendary” Spandau Prison concerts, and literally dozens of Baroque operas about which you remember nothing beyond the fact that they all sound exactly the same--all of these go straight to the used CD store where, like lost umbrellas, they will be returned to circulation to nourish the next generation of classical CD collectors. And as for you, well, you still purchase new releases, but discretely, selectively, and you take the time to enjoy every one.

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