Embarking on building a classical LP collection...in 2023!

[oldvinyl]

For piano:

Beethoven Egmont Overture
Rachmaninoff piano concertos (Apparently this guy was a slow learner, but after a few bites of the apple did some interesting piano pieces.

Just to clarify- Egmont Overture was scored for orchestra. There is a piano version, orchestral reduction.

For Beethoven piano, I would recommend the concertos and the later sonatas. Then, explore from there.

 

[godofwealth]

One forgotten genre that Beethoven excelled in was lieder. His vocal music is not as popular as his instrumental music. I acquired a set of Beethoven Songs sung by Peter Schreier (Decca/Teldec). I have played these thousands of times. Really beautiful songs once you get to know them. Not as haunting as Schubert’s Winterreise, but more joyful.

 

[bonzo75]

One forgotten genre that Beethoven excelled in was lieder. His vocal music is not as popular as his instrumental music. I acquired a set of Beethoven Songs sung by Peter Schreier (Decca/Teldec). I have played these thousands of times. Really beautiful songs once you get to know them. Not as haunting as Schubert’s Winterreise, but more joyful.

View attachment 103087

many of Peter Schreier stuff is wonderful. I prefer his 8 euro Melodiya winterreise to the coveted Dietrich Fischer Dieskau collectible which I have also heard on tape, and I prefer the 8 euro Melodiya to the Fischer Dieskau tape. More to also do with the Schreier being a live recording getting the concert hall ambience

That said, this buying is not so simple. The 8 euro Melodiya sounds better and different from the same performance on the Phillips digital and the Eterna which in this case just don’t have the magic.

And while it is easy to recommend Oh this is only a 8 euro LP, cost of discovery here buying the wrong ones can be pretty high before you purchase the 8 euro one.

I have also gone through similar recommendations from other users, on Gon and other forums, who posted recommendations. Too much wastage. And hey, I got an low price archiv digital Peter Schreier Ely Ameling Bach cantata that sounded great.

same goes for any piece. You can buy 10 different chaconnes. Or 10 different Beethoven or any composer’s violin on some other instruments concertos, or even 20. And in many cases, you need more than 1 performance of the same piece

 

[oldvinyl]

One forgotten genre that Beethoven excelled in was lieder. His vocal music is not as popular as his instrumental music. I acquired a set of Beethoven Songs sung by Peter Schreier (Decca/Teldec). I have played these thousands of times. Really beautiful songs once you get to know them. Not as haunting as Schubert’s Winterreise, but more joyful.

Take me to your ... lieder!
I have a huge collection of lieder, most was given to me for helping another collector sell his orchestral LPs.

 

[oldvinyl]

many of Peter Schreier stuff is wonderful. I prefer his 8 euro Melodiya winterreise to the coveted Dietrich Fischer Dieskau collectible which I have also heard on tape, and I prefer the 8 euro Melodiya to the Fischer Dieskau tape. More to also do with the Schreier being a live recording getting the concert hall ambience

That said, this buying is not so simple. The 8 euro Melodiya sounds better and different from the same performance on the Phillips digital and the Eterna which in this case just don’t have the magic.

And while it is easy to recommend Oh this is only a 8 euro LP, cost of discovery here buying the wrong ones can be pretty high before you purchase the 8 euro one.

I have also gone through similar recommendations from other users, on Gon and other forums, who posted recommendations. Too much wastage.

same goes for any piece. You can buy 10 different chaconnes. Or 10 different Beethoven or any composer’s violin on some other instruments concertos, or even 20. And in many cases, you need more than 1 performance of the same piece

I agree - it is hard to know whether someone else will like a recording or performance or composer or particular piece. Even if I liked it.

In my buying days, I had to trust my instincts and tastes. I did not know about supposed audiophile lists, nor did I use them as a guide when they were available.

 

[bonzo75]

I did not know about supposed audiophile lists, nor did I use them as a guide when they were available.

Like I said before, I would avoid TAS, Salvatore, and Fremer lists for classical. Some there will be good of course. But there are far better and not on lists. They are obviously fun to try as every audiophile should always try industry lists whether with recordings or gear otherwise no point being in the hobby

 

[bonzo75]

I agree - it is hard to know whether someone else will like a recording or performance or composer or particular piece. Even if I liked it.
.

it is more of not knowing what the other person’s reference is. The only way I can find out your reference is to sit and listen with you, or to buy some of your recommendations. If I buy some of the recommendations of all recommenders, I will lose a lot of money on those who made some awful recommendations. So the cost of discovery will exist, whether using audiophile lists or audiophile forums.

 

[godofwealth]

I agree about not relying on anyone’s lists or sources like The Penguin Guide, which rated albums on a scale. Most of the fun is really buying some album that you eventually like a lot. I used to find out about new music from my university FM radio. These days, of course, streaming has changed everything. Now, a million albums can be sampled with a mouse click. Streaming has fundamentally changed record collection.

The world has changed so radically in the last 40 years that I have lived in the US. Most of my career has been spent developing AI technology. None of us in the field realized it would accelerate at this pace. We are going to see in the next decade or so even more radical changes as extremely powerful AI systems come online, which digest more data than any human can process in a thousand lifetimes. As this morning’s New York Times headlines stated, universities the world over have realized education in the post chatGPT world will have to be radically different. A history professor assigned a 5 page essay as part of the final exam. When reviewing the turned in solutions, one essay stood out as easily the best, a model of writing and clarity. When confronted by the professor, the student admitted that chatGPT had written the essay! Many videos on TikTok are emerging of students taking their exams online using chatGPT. How can anyone tell anymore what was submitted was done by a student? But even chatGPT is just the beginning. Far more powerful AI systems are being designed, which will in a few years take over large parts of most creative activities, including composition of music. Where will that leave us?

 

[Artnet]

Where will that leave us?

In reality uncertain but also scrambling for older recordings

and hoping that universities are in a position to defend the value and need for learning, academic pursuit to train us to think, evolve and escape serfdom.

Somewhat like classical music can do maybe? Think of all those revolutionary composers

 

[morricab]

I agree about not relying on anyone’s lists or sources like The Penguin Guide, which rated albums on a scale. Most of the fun is really buying some album that you eventually like a lot. I used to find out about new music from my university FM radio. These days, of course, streaming has changed everything. Now, a million albums can be sampled with a mouse click. Streaming has fundamentally changed record collection.

The world has changed so radically in the last 40 years that I have lived in the US. Most of my career has been spent developing AI technology. None of us in the field realized it would accelerate at this pace. We are going to see in the next decade or so even more radical changes as extremely powerful AI systems come online, which digest more data than any human can process in a thousand lifetimes. As this morning’s New York Times headlines stated, universities the world over have realized education in the post chatGPT world will have to be radically different. A history professor assigned a 5 page essay as part of the final exam. When reviewing the turned in solutions, one essay stood out as easily the best, a model of writing and clarity. When confronted by the professor, the student admitted that chatGPT had written the essay! Many videos on TikTok are emerging of students taking their exams online using chatGPT. How can anyone tell anymore what was submitted was done by a student? But even chatGPT is just the beginning. Far more powerful AI systems are being designed, which will in a few years take over large parts of most creative activities, including composition of music. Where will that leave us?

Pets...at best...

 

[tima]

Oh this is only a 8 euro LP, cost of discovery here buying the wrong ones can be pretty high before you purchase the 8 euro one.

Not to mention the $35 shipping charge.

 

[iaxel]

BTW, even newly released DG (digital) are getting better.
DG (re-)started issuing vinyl releases a few years ago, but their pressing quality and sound was awful.
Recently, I've purchased some newly recorded and pressed records from them, and the quality (and sound) has significantly improved.
E.g. Hilary Hahn recent release:

 

[spiritofmusic]

Not to mention the $35 shipping charge.

Tim, this is a big reason I'm gonna concentrate mainly on UK-sourced classical vinyl.

 

[tima]

Tim, this is a big reason I'm gonna concentrate mainly on UK-sourced classical vinyl.

You'd think the globalist wankers could come up with a low cost franking system -- across the world for mailing books and records. Outsource it to amazon, they know how to deliver stuff at low cost. We are fortunate over here to have 'media mail' in country.

 

[bonzo75]

Tim, this is a big reason I'm gonna concentrate mainly on UK-sourced classical vinyl.

I am seeing a 40 quid LP I want being sold in the UK with 20 quid shipping. And it is just one of the performances, not the first edition, though NM, so if I buy the other performances, and add shipping, I will go to a few hundred even a thousand, just for one piece, and mostly not ED1s. The best of these for this particular piece go to a couple of grand so not even in my consideration set. So source from wherever you like.

 

[spiritofmusic]

Well Ked, that price for postage is preposterous. I'll only buy from those not trying to gouge me.
"Cheapest price incl p&p", not just
"Cheapest price"

 

[montesquieu]

Bit late coming to this thread but some good advice re labels, genres etc.

I built my collection during periods as a keen player and singer at school, then as a music student (organ, piano, guitar), and then as a non-professional player making my careeer in something else, but still playing organ/running choirs or whatever, or at the same time as working on my harpsichord or guitar or later still Renaissance or Baroque lute technique. I went through some quiet patches for music where I was working so much my system was the main focus, but I always saw myself as a musician first and a listener second.

As a consequence most of my 'collections' have come about during periodic enthusiasms, some of which lasted years and some of which also repeated at different times. At school, Bach keyboard and instrumental, Beethoven piano sonatas and symphonies, Schubert songs. At university, mad enthusiasms for Josquin, Palestrina, Monteverdi madrigals, Haydn and Beethoven quartets, Schumann ... in later life filling in the gaps - Buxtehude, Couperin, all sorts of Renaissance music from Dowland to Barfark, endless baroque lute, baroque and romantic French organ music, Brahms and Wolf lieder, the bottomless well of the Bach cantatas .. and so on and so on.

It was always music-led and where something wasn't available on LP (as increasingly, things weren't as we got into the 90s) I bought on CD. In my early days I paid attention to the 'popular classical' usually encountered in orchestral concerts, and indeed went to a few such concerts - Brahms and Tschaikowsky symphonies, piano and violin concertos, the big warhorse Mahler and Brucker stuff - but perhaps because I wasn't really an orchestral instrument player (except for a brief, 3-4 year daliance with the French horn) it never floated my boat. Likewise opera - just not my thing. I have always gone to lots of concerts, but mainly renaissance, baroque and chamber or choral music.

So I'm afraid I don't have much to add about recordings and stuff. Yes, for baroque, most of the best stuff is on L'Oiseau Lyre and Harmonia Mundi, for example, but don't miss out on music that isn't on a fancy label, it can be just as good. As someone else pointed out, you get so-so performances on great labels well recorded, and wonderful performances badly recorded or pressed - when you get something that's both at the same time, expect to play it to death.

Follow the music, follow the artists whose recordings you like, and see what else they are playing. I'm a trustee of a long-established Bach festival and get to rub shoulders with the performers, some of whose stuff I've bought in part to support them as directly as I can.

I still follow the reviews - I get regular publications from various organisations, and that often leads down a rabbit hole of chasing recordings by a particular perfomer, or a new composer who wasn't properly on the radar previously but who turns out to quite magical (Silvius Weiss is a relatively recent example for me).

Then the search for new or second hand LPs or (most often these days, CDs) from a variety of sources, not just Discogs and eBay, but specialist outfits and frequently these days, from the performers themselves who often sit directly behind the likes of Bandcamp - yes it's great for 'Classical' too.

I tend to screen stuff first by listening to it on a streaming service (I use Qobuz) this helps me decide to fork our hard cash for physical media. In part this is because I spend as much on jazz these days as classical (possibly more) as I'm pretty well sorted for classical, but only now really getting into the nitty gritty of a jazz collection.

Anyway, I see my system as the portal to all of this wonderful music, and not as an end in itself. If you told me I could keep the music and was only allowed a shitty system, or could keep the system and, say, just 500 recordings, I'd keep the music.

 

[spiritofmusic]

Tom, thanks, your enthusiasm shines thru. Yes, I'm absolutely not gonna become too exclusionary or elitist on this. Of the 500 or so classical albums I have, some labels stick out as always amazing sounding (Philips, especially). Only a handful are what I'd call decidedly average or poor. Hang in to your hat, I even like quite a few DG Digital from the mid late 80s (measure me for the guillotine).
I haven't always had the best experiences buying from individuals on eBay and occasionally Discogs where grading hasn't been reflected in the quality of LP ordered. For that reason I may try and work on relying more on online dealers who go out of their way to stress good quality, quiet vinyl.
If I had my time again, I'd have camped at Harold Moores for a couple of decades 1997-2017. What a treasure trove.

 

[montesquieu]

I should have added a tl;dr:

Rabbit holes are where it's at. Whatever you enjoy - dive in, dig, dig deeper.

 

[spiritofmusic]

Year Of The Rabbit.