Wow Ken, you have really gotten pulled into this classical thing hook, line & sinker.
Now if we can only get our hands on that Bernstein set.....
Tom:
I just placed orders on Amazon.com for all of the CDs listed here: http://www.classicalcdguide.com/
I am enjoying Classical so very much I thought purchasing the above CDs would be a good way to experience some of the best composers. What do you guys think?
Please keep me posted on the Bernstein Set as I will definitely jump on it when it becomes available again.
Ken
Looks like a nice collection of music, although I am not familiar with any of the performances in particular.
I made an interesting discovery recently with regards to the importance of SQ and classical music. I my rummagings through the Crack House I cam across some albums that I remember from my parents classical collection when I was growing up. I never had too much appreciation for classical music back then and I think I am beginning to understand why. Almost every one of those albums that I picked up had fairly dreadful sound. (Not that the equipment we had in our home when I was a kid was any great shakes, but these albums were particularly bad. Even today, poorly recorded classical music just doesn't hold my interest. I have much more tolerance for poor sounding pop music, but if classical does not sound good it doesn't stay on for more than 1 or 2 minutes. I guess it may have to do with the fact that I have a good acoustic reference of what unamplified classical is supposed to sound like. Pop on the other hand is supposed to sound like whatever was inside the producers brain that morning. Some people have suggested that I grew into my appreciation of classical music, but my soon Bobby developed a love of classical at age 14 (but he was used to hearing it on my rig.)
With this in mind I have the following suggestions for you. First keep an eye out for releases from the RCA Living Stereo, Mercury Living Presence and Reference Recordings series. I have never heard a bad sounding disc from any of them. Secondly, while you are in the discovery phase, make liberal use of your local library. Library records had a bad name because of how beat up they got and how bad the sounded after that. But CDs take much more abuse that records and still sound good. Check with your reference librarian and see if you guys have a web based catalog system. I have on-line access to the catalogs of all 54 local libraries in Nassau County and can order CD fro any of them from the comfort of my home at it will be delivered to my local branch. Great way to save a few bucks while to are trying to establish your preferences.
Finally another fun thing to do is once you find a particular piece of music that you like, start searching out multiple performances of that piece.It is interesting to hear how different conductors and orchestras put their own spin on a give piece. I must have 6 or more copies each of Scheherazade, Pictures at an Exhibition, Beethoven's 9th, and Peter & the Wolf and each one has its own unique character. (I have also gotten rid of several lousy copies of each.) This is another place where access to the library collection will com in handy. And if you find something from the library that you really like, you can always but a copy of that single disc (as opposed to the other couple of dozen that you listened to and didn't really care for.)