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Please suggest a few really good classical recordings

After a somewhat scary number of years attending all sorts of musical performances ranging from avant garde jazz to Broadway shows to folk to pop to rock & roll to zydeco in every conceivable venue, we finally had the great good fortune to experience the Cleveland Symphony at Severance Hall this past Saturday.

While we've enjoyed Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Holst, Ravel, Stravinsky, Strauss and Tchaikovsky recordings, we'd never had an opportunity to listen to a live orchestra before.  This particular performance was of Sibelius' 1st with Susanna Malkki conducting, so as authentic as could reasonably be expected.  We quickly realized that the classical recordings we have simply don't do the material justice.

I have some MFSL, MasterWorks and Deutche Grammaphon pressings along with a few CDs of classical music.  To my ears, none of them really compared very well with pressings by those companies or others (Sheffield and various Japanese houses) of acoustic jazz, folk or rock.  Having read several comments here indicating that most classical recordings are not as good as they could be, I now finally understand why.  The basis of comparison was simply not there before.

So, please suggest a few recordings that might be worthy of the material.  Vinyl would be preferable, but CD or SACD are also fine.  Stuff we know really well includes the Brandenburg Concertos, Beethoven's 9th, Holst's Planets and Stravinsky's Firebird.  Those would be easiest for us to really grasp what we've been missing, but finding a great recording or three is the priority.  Thanks in advance and we look forward to your suggestions!
effischer

Showing 1 response by effischer

effischer OP
552 posts
 
@almarg @rcprince @newbee 

Thank you all for your suggestions.  Have them noted down and will look to see what pops up at various resellers & Ebay.

@millercarbon 

I've had several copies of the same LPs by multiple artists that really show the difference the pressing machine can make, so often buy several of material I like.  Sometimes I give the less well-pressed copies away, sometimes save them for the album art.  I'll have to see what happens with this search and hope I'll be able to report back in the not too distant future.

Thanks again everyone!
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