Classical Music for Aficionados

jim204 & two left ears, I agree with you both on a high ends systems inability to reproduce anything close to real over a home system. For me though a modest system and a good recording can serve well in bringing me me into the music itself . I just don’t try to bring down the house.

Re using headphone as a source. FWIW I recently put together a separate, dedicated, headphone system - I’m just amazed at the clarity this can provide sans all of the audiophile stuff about imaging, etc. Its just about clarity and tone.

FWIW I too have found that I now prefer music for solo piano and chamber music. Especially the former. Just don’t need all of the thunder and lightning to get my attention. Mahler is just dying on my shelves now, but Sibelius comes to visit now and again. Not really true, I just play orchestral as background music for reading.

Len, get you on jean Redpath . Many years ago I attended a concert in Ayr Town Hall and the great and the good of all things Burns were there but it was Jean Redpath who stole the shoe. She sang my Love is like a Red Red Rose, not a dry eye in the house. Funnily enough the man who was most associated with that song Kenneth McKellar was also there but he couldn't sing it any more sice his wife passed.

Another blast from the past, Hamilton Harty piano concerto.  The Chandos recording is really excellent, very clear, good balance between soloist and orchestra, and a nice distant perspective to the whole thing, which for me adds to the (relative) realism of the thing. 

Rather than start a brand new discussion, I thought I'd ask the classical aficionados here to garner their knowledge and educated guesses.

If I wanted to get recordings of every classical piece ever recorded (not written, but recorded) without duplicates (e.g. just one recording of Beethoven's 5th, one recording of Bach's cello suites), about how many CDs would it take?  For simplicity, let's limit it to western classical music, from early music to contemporary.  According to the Bach 333 project, it took 225 CDs to present every piece composed by Bach (but including some duplicate recordings of the same piece).  If someone as prolific as Bach can be covered in ~200 CDs, I'd think that most can be covered in far less.

Would the average output of a composer be something like 50 CDs?  How many classical music composers have there been who have had their music recorded?  10,000, 20,000, 50,000?

For the sake of agument, let's say 20,000; then 20,000 x 50CDs = 1,000,000.

Do you think 1,000,000 CDs would be enough to have a complete set of every piece of classical music ever recorded?  Am I grossly underestimating or overestimating?

I apologize for intruding with a non-music post, but I've always been curious about this.

Also, does anyone have a link to a website that might have information related to questions like this?