I love the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto as well and enjoy Francescatti's playing, is this CD with Szell? If so I plan to pick up the big Szell box.
I believe Szell is conducting the Mednelssohn (Cleveland Orchestra), but not the Tchaikovsky (NY Phil with Thomas Schippers)
While my wife took the kids to Disneyworld this week, I drove to New York (yes, from Chicago) and looked around the Big Apple for a few days. Between here and there, I visited every record store I could locate including Academy in Manhattan and the Princeton Exchange in NJ. I came back with a trunk full of classical LPs. Tonight I've been listening to Kurt Weill's two symphonies.
Tonight's listening for me was the last of a group of records I won about three weeks ago on eBay: the Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique recorded by the LSO under Felix Weingartner ca. 1925. Good performance well, if a bit dryly, recorded; the signal point of interest is that, like Oskar Fried, Weingartner includes piano doubling the orchestral chimes in the witches' sabbath mvt. It's a tremendously effective option, and I'm surprised so few recordings adopt it, although I suppose it's a matter of economics (not wanting to pay a pianist just to play a few chords). In recent days, I've auditioned the others, a group of overtures--Mendelssohn's Hebrides and Ruy Blas, Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots, Lortzing's Der Waffenschmied, and Flotow's Alessandro Stradella--in ca. 1928 performances by the BPO under Julius Pruwer. I've remarked before on how I admire this associate of Brahms and how I'm perplexed at how little attention he receives today; he didn't let me down in any of these. I've heard any number of vocal excerpts from the Huguenots, but until now never the overture, and it proved to be a real winner, at least as Pruwer does it, built largely on the old hymn tune "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" that also occupied Bach's attention now and again. Good times. Last weekend, I visited a Goodwill store and for the first time in ages encountered classical 78s "in the wild," as they say, together with a large assortment of mostly mono LPs. My pickings from those will be next; more about them in due course.
It was OOP for a long time, but you can download the CD quality flac at 7digital for only $3.49 !! Love the way Stephan Schmidt plays guitar... his Bach Lute Pieces are my favorite - also available at 7digital, but better pricing is available at eclassical
Man, best part of being a classical lover is that you can get classical vinyl for dirt cheap. I found a sealed copy of Mozart Requiem for $4 the other day that I've been stuck on lately.
Academy had a good selection of classical vinyl, but with the revival of the medium, I was hoping it would be more expanded than it was (compared to when I was there 10 years ago or so). CDs still seem to be king at Academy where they've always had a great selection. Same thing with Princeton Exchange in NJ. There are two good stores in Chicago for classical vinyl that I know of: Reckless on the north side and Wonderland records out in Roselle. These two stores compare favorable to Academy in terms of vinyl. I suppose selection varies for all of these stores to a large degree, depending on when they buy a big collection from a deceased listener, how often a collector like me comes along and cleans out the good stuff, etc, etc. I also still like checking out the various Half-Price Book locations here in the area. I think there are five of them. Not a big selection by any means, but I still always seem to walk out with three or four good lps whenever I'm there. I don't shop for CDs anymore because I'm content with my collection (+6K), plus it seems that any interesting CD issue you might stumble across can be had within a big box somewhere, so what's the point?
Tonight, first of those records from the Goodwill: Tchaikowsky's 1st Sym., Indianapolis SO under Fabien Sevitzky (nephew of Serge Koussevitzky), 1948. This copy is a on conventional shellac pressings; I already had a copy in a contemporary RCA Victor "de luxe" vinyl issue. The sym. is spread across 9 sides of 5 12" records. Why I bought the dupe: my vinyl copy, although looking very nice, was difficult to play cleanly, distorting on peaks, and I wanted to see if a regular shellac set would do better. In fact, it does; with a 2.8 mil truncated elliptical stylus, it offers sound that is clean, firm, and vivid, and although I haven't yet compared directly I think the surfaces are about as quiet as the vinyl ones. As to the performance, I can't imagine anyone conveying more commitment or enthusiasm, and the orchestra acquits itself with distinction, even if it was at the time no more than 20 years old and hardly of the same reputation as, say, the CSO or PSONY. To the extent things are "weak," it's the composer's fault; not, I think, one of Tchaikowsky's more successful efforts, although pleasant enough in places. Interesting tidbit: if I remember correctly, not even in Russia had anyone recorded this work before this RCA Victor issue.
The 'house clearance' trend after old people die or move to retirement homes in Germany where I live, is still releasing huge numbers of very well-preserved second-hand vinyl. Demographically, this might have peaked already, but the chances younger relatives are interested in the records has also decreased. Ergo, pristine 5LP box sets for €5 .
I would doubt if there's anything I bought that you can't find on CD, so nothing super noteworthy to speak of. Nevertheless, the real treasure is the analogue sound. That's the reason that I buy vinyl. I respect my CD collection, but I love my records.
Old records never cease to be full of surprises. As I wait for an oil change for my car, I'm editing my dub of the Julius Pruwer Les Huguenots overture recording that I mentioned a couple of days ago, and comparing it to the accounts on YouTube quickly revealed it contains a lot more music than they do. Did a bit of digging, and come to find out the wily conductor, faced with a piece running around 5 minutes and record sides of 4 minutes each, interpolated the music from an Act I chorus ("Bonheur de la table") to flesh the thing out. Well, who can complain (aside from purists, that is)? More music, and played with enthusiasm if not, perhaps, the last word in polish. Meyerbeer, the consummate man of the theater, undoubtedly would approve. Oh, Pruwer also adds a chord to resolve the music at the end of side 1. I've removed it from my final copy. Never a dull moment... [Edit] Hmm. Looking into things a bit further, I find that according to my favorite online resource, Wikipedia, the encyclopedia anyone can edit, "A short orchestral prelude, featuring the Lutheran chorale Ein feste Burg, replaces the extended overture Meyerbeer originally intended for the opera." I wonder if what Pruwer recorded was the extended, discarded score?
Enjoying this lovely CD. So glad I picked up all the Bach CDs from this collection in my earlier days of collecting.
Usually... but, of course, it's the music that counts. I think a nice cover can help sell an album to someone who might be on the fence about buying it.
Enjoying both of these symphonies tonight, Karajan's 60's cycle...one of the best "budget buys" I ever made.