Please, advise on best sounding classical records on your LP12 and Naim system

Hi Andrea,

Yes please do, I hope you will get even more from your LP12.
And let us know how you get on with your classical disks, especially if you try any of the recommendations.

regards,

mat

A few more.
Again, I am suggesting some absolute gems, which score “superb” in at least two of the three categories: musical reading, musical performance, engineering. Analogue unless otherwise stated.

Ravel: Daphnis and Chloe, complete (Montreal SO and chorus / Charles Dutoit) – Decca digital SXDL7526, 1981. This is a masterclass in how to write for the orchestra and the performance and recording are superb.

Schubert: Piano works, 1822-1828 (Alfred Brendel) – Philips 6747 175, 8LP (this is a 1972 reissue of 8 separate LPs made in the preceding few years). Often, it’s hard to recommend big compilations – something or other lets the side down – or piano recordings – often unconvincing. But here the great man doesn’t put a note wrong and the recording is fine. These are deeply moving recordings.

Shostakovich: Symphony 6 (Leningrad PO / Yevgeny Mravinsky) – HMV ASD2805 (this is a 1972 reissue of a Russian Melodiya live recording made in 1965). Well, the recording isn’t top rate, and the Moscow audience in February is rather sniffly, but, of all the LPs I’ve suggested, this must be one of the most stunning. Mravinsky’s interpretation and the orchestra’s performance (absolutely no edits or retakes here) is breathtaking. I have never been able to listen to another recording of the sixth since acquiring the LP many years ago: they all terminally fall short in comparison. You also get excellent performances of Sibelius’s seventh symphony and Swan of Tuonela on the HMV reissue.

Strauss: Four last songs, and five other songs with orchestra (Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Berlin Radio SO / George Szell) – HMV ASD2888, 1966 (this album is a 1973 reissue of the original Columbia release). As with all singers, partly a matter of taste, and Schwarzkopf is a highly characteristic singer (her later recordings became mannered), but this is a beautiful and natural performance without the high octane approach of some divas.

Walton: Symphony 1 (London SO / André Previn) – RCA SB6691, 1966. This reading has never been bettered for rhythmic drive, energy and excitement. And, since rhythmic drive, energy and excitement are what the symphony is about (the second movement is marked ‘con malizia’ – ‘with malice’), the slightly scrawny recording is forgiveable.

cheers
Jeremy

Now dear Andrea,
Please forget "best sounding." Real music sounds in silence, from the printed score! George

Sorry about that, but surely the point is to find a system that works best with the music you love than try to find music that makes the system show off. In other word enjoying the msuci rather than the sound of it, which is subtlely but crucially different.

There used to be a long running thread called Demo Discs, or such-like, that was a hoot. I cannot read such things without an idea that the horse and the cart have somehow been strapped together in the wrong order. But sorry for my bluntness above. I kinda cracked when I see such topsy-tervy thoughts.

George

Dear George you imply that some folk spend there time frantically searching for your so called 'Demo' tracks and not the music. That is generally rubbish IMO.!

Classic music is actually a damn good place to make my point. Given there are so many versions (oh alright interpretations to be snobby about what the pop world calls 'covers') of famous classical pieces, what on earth is wrong with looking to buy the best versions which meet criteria including sympathetic treatment and interpretation AND the best recordng quality.

Granted music is good for it's own sake, it is a lot more pleasureable listening to a superbly recorded version when you can have it rather than getting by with a scrappy recording just because you want to avoid beng accused of purchasing for the 'sound instead of the music' as you put it, or persist in listening to a definitive early recording and get less pleasure from it than a superior quality but not quite definitive (to the classical snobs) version.

regards
geoff

Quite right, Geoff!

But the number of times the best recorded version of something is also tediously dull!

The best recording, as a recording, I have of any music, blessedly comes in a performance that is exemplary and a very far from dull! The Dream Of Gerontius from EMI with Nicholae Gedda as Gerontius, Helen Watts as the Angel, and Robert Lloyd in the two Bass roles. [Sergeant's great 1945 recording actually most unusually has two Bass Soloists as Elgar hoped for but almost never gets. One sings for perhaps five minutes so a fat fee sees this idea off!].

Sir Adrian Boult leads the Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus, and this is augmented to a huge choir with the addition of the LPO Chorus as well!

As can well be imagined this makes a huge demand on the quality of the actual recording, which for once in such epic scaled performance is actually met and then adds tremendous subtlety just for luxury!

So now I have answered the question I suppose! But I listen more often to the Sergeant recording! Which has the subtlety but not the dynamic! And he has the incomparable Heddle Nash as Gerontius, plus the other soloists are all tip top! But the Huddersfield Choral Society sing with such fervour in the very days of the Victory that they do actually defeat the 78 groove, but it has a visceral quality that simply is not soon going to be matched, simply by dint of Nash and the Choir's contribution! Thus it is that one could wish that EMI's best LP recording techniques could have existed in the last days of the War! But the splendour of the old performance, and its extreme of elevation and depth of sadness survives the years and old course-groove direct recording in a way that makes one think! Fortunately the recording only blasts twice in the biggest choruses: "Go Forth Upon Thy Journey, Christian Soul!" and "Praise To The Holiest In The Height!"

Somehow this is a performance that actually is not hurt by this. I have listened many times to it, such that these two blemishes actually passed by un-noticed.

That is why I cannot believe that I can whole heartedly recommend any recording in front of it, though Boult's control and architectural approach to the music makes it indispensable, but a better recommendation? I think not, though not having either would be a significant loss.

The 1976 Boult on mid-price EMI, and the 1945 Sergeant on full-priced Testament.

The other issue is that I am sure this music is not good for a shared dem! Most people would find it tough going on the first acquaintance!

All the best from George

quote:

Originally posted by GFFJ:
Sorry about that, but surely the point is to find a system that works best with the music you love than try to find music that makes the system show off.

A more careful reading of my posts would reveal that I mention three criteria, of which the recording quality is only one and placed last. In particular, I state that the recommended discs of Shostakovich and Walton are not excellent recordings. In other words, your thinking is aligned with mine.

But I agree with Geoff, too. Why not enjoy and appreciate a good job done by engineers as well as the performers? Which is why I recommended the Dutoit Daphnis rather than Monteux's fifties recording which is rather long in the tooth now.

There are, after all, plenty of composers, and Ravel and Debussy are only two, for whom the sound of the music is an important component of their composition.

quote:

That is why I cannot believe that I can whole heartedly recommend any recording in front of it, though Boult's control and architectural approach to the music makes it indispensable, but a better recommendation? I think not, though not having either would be a significant loss.

George I fully appreciate what you are saying. It fits your immersive understanding and appreciation of classical music which goes to the point you made yourself earlier that "Real music sounds in silence, from the printed score!"

But for quite a portion of us here (including myself) a lot of the subtleties and hidden depths of classical performances are beyond our current dabblings in this complex musical soup that classical is and I will readily admit that in my niavety I will quite likely be tempted by crystalline sounds and musical dynamism to the point where I will reject the superior interpretation for the one that gives me more pleasure at an audio rather than absolute musical level and be happy in that mistake.

regards
Geoff

Dear Jeremy,

I don't think I was aiming at you for all that. But I also think it true for example that the old EMI engineers did at least as remarkable job for the Nash/Sergeant recording as they did for Boult! It is probably impossible to guess at all the difficulties, such as continuity of electricity, no heating, great difficulty travelling. People who were by no means well fed, singing and playing their hearts out. The engineers working in a hall not familiar to them compared to London Studios, and right at the edge of what their recording machines could possible capture in the wax groove.

As for colouristic music, I will say that none of it counts as much for me as one fugue by Bach played on a harpsichord! The harpsichord is an ascetic masterpiece of a musical instrument, but the rich thick scoring of the high romantics is so ripe, I find sometimes the fear that the mould has already got to the fruit!

I do enjoy Ravel on occasion, though not enough to more than listen to the diet on the radio!

ATB from George

PS: I also find the Walton recording of the Wise Virgins Suite [which is Bach modernised as I am sure you know!] recorded during the days of the Dunkirk evacuation simply unbearably sad. It comes out very rarely, but it does come out. Sometimes the circumstance of a recording tint the performance in a way one really hopes will never actually be repeated.

Same with those two Handel Arias sung by Aksel Schiøtz days before the overun of Denmark in 1940. Again there is a tremedous depth that transcends everything else and I do wonder about the feelings of the performers ...

These may be found in a youtube link in the Musical Discoveries Of The Year Thread on page one. Strongly recomended! Here.

George you are obssessive......but you know that

Dear Geoff,

Often the best of music making is found is respectably good rather than exceptionally fine recordings. I think there is s middle way where the best performances do not have to struggle to speak through the recording. Fortunately most of my favourite music is actually not heavy in its scale of forces, and so often is acceptably served in recordings from all the electrical recording era.

Some of the best Jazz, I think I am right in thinking, was captured on records in the 1920s and '30s?

Anyway, we shall not fall out even if we disagree a bit here and there! I don't really think that liking, even loving any music, can ever be called a mistake! It is all subjective to a degree [except where style is concerned, but we are not talking about that!], and I suspect that the fair feeling that I have about steering the reader to investigate the nether byways of music, is really only a sign of a deep conviction about these less know areas!

ATB from G

PS: Geoff, I do know that!