Old favourites

[Barbirollians]

I thought it might be diverting if forum it's we're to dig out their first or an old favourite recording of a piece that they had not played for a good while and to see how it stands up .

I chose the Perlman/Giulini account of the Beethoven Violin Concerto which I bought on cassette and played endlessly in my late teens .

Modern reviewers dismiss it as too slow but it is extraordinarily alive Perlman plays with extraordinary beauty but it is the accompaniment that struck me most today Philharmonia and Giulini are on fire .

What old favourite might you choose ?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Nice idea. Last Friday I played the Patzak/Ferrier/VPO/Walter Das Lied von der Erde - my "if you could only take one disc with you to the desert island" choice, and which I bought with my first batch of CDs in February 1985 (having had LP versions since aged 18). I don't play it often - an experience this intense needs very careful listening circumstances - and was astonished, not by how good it remains (that wasn't a surprise) but by how clear the recording is; the orchestral detail is something I'd not noticed before. And Walter's conducting, too, is remarkable both for its fury in the First Movement (not an aspect I associate with Walter's conducting) and its meticulous attention to Mahler's score.

Very, very special.

[vinteuil]

... when I was about ten, an older brother (not normally into classical music : I think it may have been the influence of a Girl... ) acquired the LP version of -

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00000417N

I was entranced : one of my first 'grown-up' experiences of Bach.


I listened to it again and again (far more than the poor brother, who made no headway with the Girl... ). Altho' I wd nowadays go for a HIPP rendition, this remains magical for me...






.

[kea]

How much of this is just due to conditioning though? Hearing a recording of a piece for the first time, one tends to get from that recording a certain sense of how the piece should go—not necessarily a sense that the interpretive choices or instrumental sound of the particular recording are correct, but that there is a "correct" way, and one's conception becomes dependent on one's emotional & analytical response to this first listening. It can take a long time to overcome this idea of a correct way, possibly. (Until quite recently I'd get rid of any duplicate recordings in my collection, as I only wanted the best one. One, singular. >_>)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

How much of this is just due to conditioning though? Hearing a recording of a piece for the first time, one tends to get from that recording a certain sense of how the piece should go—not necessarily a sense that the interpretive choices or instrumental sound of the particular recording are correct, but that there is a "correct" way, and one's conception becomes dependent on one's emotional & analytical response to this first listening. It can take a long time to overcome this idea of a correct way, possibly. (Until quite recently I'd get rid of any duplicate recordings in my collection, as I only wanted the best one. One, singular. >_>)

I'm not sure this is relevant to this particular discussion, Kea, if I've understood Barbi correctly - "favourites" doesn't necessarily mean "the one we think of as the best" (although in my case, I have chosen just such a one). As vinty suggests, it's as much a question of which "blast from the past" keeps on "blasting"?

The "conditioning" you suggest is more likely to come about if one has only one recording of a work to refer to. Very few of the recordings of the works that matter to me that I bought first (and played most often) remain reference recordings for me - I've not played my Cluytens Beethovens since the '80s - and my most recent set (the marvellous Krivine) "beats" all "competition" - even the Karajans that had been my "benchmarks" since the late '70s. It's those "very few" that I thought the title thread referred to.

[umslopogaas]

An old favourite of mine is the first proper grown-up music I ever bought: the Solti/LSO recording of Mahler's second symphony on two full price Decca LPs. I soon wrecked that copy on my Mum's Dansette record player, which was completely unable to track the loud bits, but I later managed to find another good second hand copy, which I still have. In fact, these days I usually play the CD version - I have the complete Chicago SO set - but I still have great affection for the old LSO LPs.

[gurnemanz]

An old favourite of mine is the first proper grown-up music I ever bought: the Solti/LSO recording of Mahler's second symphony on two full price Decca LPs. I soon wrecked that copy on my Mum's Dansette record player, which was completely unable to track the loud bits, but I later managed to find another good second hand copy, which I still have. In fact, these days I usually play the CD version - I have the complete Chicago SO set - but I still have great affection for the old LSO LPs.

Reminds me that one of my very first classical LPs was Solti/LSO Bartok, Concerto for Orchestra (mono, dated 1965). Definitely a much played old favourite which I still possess but never replaced on CD, so haven't listened to it for many years. I see it's an "iconic album", now available again on vinyl.

[Conchis]

Reminds me that one of my very first classical LPs was Solti/LSO Bartok, Concerto for Orchestra (mono, dated 1965). Definitely a much played old favourite which I still possess but never replaced on CD, so haven't listened to it for many years. I see it's an "iconic album", now available again on vinyl.

I remember borrowing the Decca mono LP of that from an older colleague back in the mid-90s.

[Pulcinella]

The King's Willcocks recording of Howells (Coll Reg inter alia) still stands the test of time for me, though I liked the excerpt (Te Deum) played last Saturday in Record Review of the new Trinity Cambridge version, recorded in Coventry.

[umslopogaas]

I hope the "iconic" reissue of the Bartok is in stereo, because the original LP was (as well as mono): I've still got my copy.

[Barbirollians]

Reminds me that one of my very first classical LPs was Solti/LSO Bartok, Concerto for Orchestra (mono, dated 1965). Definitely a much played old favourite which I still possess but never replaced on CD, so haven't listened to it for many years. I see it's an "iconic album", now available again on vinyl.

Give it a spin !

[EdgeleyRob]

I thought it might be diverting if forum it's we're to dig out their first or an old favourite recording of a piece that they had not played for a good while and to see how it stands up .

I chose the Perlman/Giulini account of the Beethoven Violin Concerto which I bought on cassette and played endlessly in my late teens .

Modern reviewers dismiss it as too slow but it is extraordinarily alive Perlman plays with extraordinary beauty but it is the accompaniment that struck me most today Philharmonia and Giulini are on fire .

What old favourite might you choose ?

Funnily enough I was listening to just such an old favourite of mine earlier today.

Holst,The Planets.

Boston Symphony Orchestra,William Steinberg.

As thrilling now on cd as it was on vinyl (long since gone) in the 70s

[Petrushka]

Rachmaninov: Piano Concerto No 2 Vladimir Ashkenazy/Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra/Kyrill Kondrashin

I bought a Decca Jubilee LP re-issue of this in February 1980 while, as a 25 year old, in the throes of one of those hopeless unrequited passions that seemed to be such a feature of those times. I played that LP until it was white but the lady concerned (she was 19 then, she'll be 55 now!) vanished out of my life a year or two after and I never played the disc again.

Fast forward 36 years and I decided to buy the CD. Heard many Rach PC 2's since 1980 of course but never this one. Damn it! It's good isn't it? Is the piano too closely recorded? Maybe, it doesn't matter. This is a truly great performance with the orchestra and soloist at white heat. Wonderful memories of course. It's all such a long time ago now but this disc is a real old favourite come back to haunt me all over again.

[silvestrione]

Beethoven last sonata, no. 32, Daniel Barenboim, EMI, from1967.

How I loved this LP! I have not heard it for over thirty years however, having eventually replaced it with Schnabel and Arrau and Richter.

I remember loving the slow introduction to the first movement, the terrific sforzandos, the wonderful dying away of the chords...now it sounds, in the CD incarnation at least, a little clangorous and over-loud in ff. The dying away of the chords is beatuiful, but you feel eventually Barenboim is going for beauty of sound too much...though that's to be harsh. First movement proper again often clangorous, a bit hectic, a young man's intensity rather than the grandeur and awe that can be found here: and the poetry, in the second subject, which is there alright, except the emphasis on beauty of sound, is a trifle self-conscious perhaps (a besetting sin of the young Barenboim I remember, at times).

The end of the movement, wonderful control of the weight of th chords as they fade to a C major quiet flourish, beautifully done. And then the opening of the Arietta! As mesmerising and rapt as I remembered, so slow, but sustained, in another world. And the build up to the extraordinary visionary 3rd ( is it? or 4th?) variation perfectly judged and a real sense of accumulation so the outburst of energy seems to emerge from what has gone before, which doesn't always happen. But the extreme slow speed, I now feel, in this passage I listened and listened too and adored, takes away from the visionary intensity (Barenboim takes nearly two minutes more over this movement than Schnabel), and in particular the tension drops too much in the following 'heights and depths variation', which Arrau and Richter do so well. Barenboim can do a visionary trill, certainly, in the famous interrupted move to the recapitulation of the theme, but when we do get to that 'carrying all before it' restatement with swirling accompaniment, Barenboim is assertive where Arrau and Schnabel and others reach a consummation. But his slow speed does pay off in the coda with the halo of trills, the theme distant, the trill even and heavenly, the other figure chiming.

I guess I won't be playing it again any time soon, which is sad really. Unless...there is that being transported to another world at the start of the last movement.

[DracoM]

Ace of Clubs recording on vinyl of course of Beethoven's Pastoral - I think E Van B i/c? At 16, listened to that thrilling storm and peace ending in the dark endlessly.