WHERE did you buy your first classical record/s?

[Richard Tarleton]

The very one! Thank you.

[Ferretfancy]

The local radio and electrical shop in Dulwich Village. I bought a Columbia turntable that plugged into the back of our Cossor radio and cost my mum £14. This was later replaced by a Pye Black Box. I think the first LP was Furtwangler and the BPO in the Brahms Variations on a Theme of Haydn, as we call it nowadays.

[VodkaDilc]

Taphouse’s music shop, 3 Magdalen Street until 1982.

Excellent record department. They used to stick the Gramophone reviews onto cardbaord and put them inside each record sleeve on display. It must have taken them ages - but this was in keeping with the high level of service there. When Debenhams eventually took over the site, (the music shop was surrounded by the existing Debenhams, formerly Elliston and Cavell) Taphouse's, by now run by the next generation of the family, moved to the Westgate Centre for a few years, but it was scaled down and never had the comprehensive coverage of the old site.

[Don Petter]

I wasnt concerned at the lack of stereo, because at the time I only had one speaker. Later when I managed to acquire a second one, I replaced most of them with the stereo versions.

Interesting. I never replaced monos with new stereo versions, not least because I found that the improvement when playing mono recordings over two speakers instead of one was vastly greater than that of stereo over mono!

[gradus]

L H Cloake (long-since gone), Streatham High Road.

[martin_opera]

The ever resilient JG Windows in Newcastle upon Tyne. La Boheme with Pavarotti and Freni.

[Don Petter]

L H Cloake (long-since gone), Streatham High Road.

And long since gone from South(ish) Croydon, where I knew them.

[makropulos]

My first records which I was at school were bought from Hickie's in Friar Street, Reading - it used to have a good selection of classical LPs with various bargain labels in special bins (MfP, Heliodor, Eclipse) and the main stock arranged by composer.

At university, it was the miraculous Gibb's Bookshop in Manchester. But that's another story.

[Don Petter]

The first classical record I ever bought was from a shop at the South end of Petersfield High Street in about 1954. It was the only 78 I ever purchased and had Anitra's Dance on one side and In the Hall of the Mountain King on the other. Can't remember orchestra or conductor, I'm afraid.

[umslopogaas]

#19 Don Petter, this is indeed an interesting subject. I dont doubt you are right, but none the less, stereo was an attempt (imperfect, but none the less worthwhile), to improve the illusion that a symphony orchestra, or whatever, was actually playing in your sitting room. As Michael Flanders once noted, there is actually nothing I would like less than to have a symphony orchestra actually playing in my sitting room, but apparently that is what hifi buffs want. And, given that the experience is completely artificial, I suppose one can fancy whatever artificiality one likes.

I think I once read a quote by Malcolm Sargent, to the effect that he didnt like stereo. He wanted all the musicians playing in one place, all sitting one on top of the other.

[CallMePaul]

My first classical LP's came from the long-departed Rushworth & Draper, Whitechapel, Liverpool. Rushworth was a famous organ builder in the 19th Century - I think the Chester Cathedral organ is his best-known. The shop also sold musical instruments and sheet music as well as both classical and popular music on record. When I lived in Liverpool there were 3 record shops in neighbouring blocks of Whitechapel - Rushworth's, Beaver Radio (which also sold radios, TVs and record playing equipment) and NEMS of Beatles fame. All these have long gone. There have been other shops selling classical records/ CD's in Liverpool over the years, but on my last visit there was just HMV, now relocated (if it is still there given the company's problems) to the trendy Liverpool One shopping mall. Compared with HMV branches in other cities, the classical selection was meagre - and that in a city with a long-established professional symphony orchestra! Shops I have known in Manchester and Edinburgh listed in this thread have also closed and many of these closures predate the Amazon era!

[Don Petter]

#19 Don Petter, this is indeed an interesting subject. I don't doubt you are right, but none the less, stereo was an attempt (imperfect, but none the less worthwhile), to improve the illusion that a symphony orchestra, or whatever, was actually playing in your sitting room. As Michael Flanders once noted, there is actually nothing I would like less than to have a symphony orchestra actually playing in my sitting room, but apparently that is what hifi buffs want. And, given that the experience is completely artificial, I suppose one can fancy whatever artificiality one likes.

I think I once read a quote by Malcolm Sargent, to the effect that he didn't like stereo. He wanted all the musicians playing in one place, all sitting one on top of the other.

I'm not suggesting that stereo wasn't a great advance, and much better than mono, even with the latter on two speakers. It's just that the step from one speaker mono to two speaker mono, sparked when we doubled up our hifi to reproduce the new stereo and at first had our existing mono collection outnumbering a few new stereo acquisitions, seemed a greater one. It let a whole lot of good mono recordings 'out of the box'.

[Flay]

Mine was in Munich on a school trip age about 14. Boult, LPO, Brahms 1.

My friends thought I was crackers!

[Nick Armstrong]

Mine was in Munich on a school trip age about 14. Boult, LPO, Brahms 1.

My friends thought I was crackers!

"He was a strange child"...

Any successful psychiatrists among your mates, Flay-me-old-mukkah?

Actually - what a shrewd purchase by the infant Flay. What drew you to it?

[EdgeleyRob]

Debenhams in Manchester.
They had a decent classical department and I had a Saturday job there,which was handy. (1973/4).