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That is a fascinating channel. Some of the recordings there are very familiar, others are by artists and/or composers completely unknown to me. Thanks for the tip, I imagine I'll be spending quite a bit of time there.

One of the first things I noticed on the channel was Furtwangler's cycle of Beethoven symphonies on EMI. Which is unfortunate because it is (mostly) not his best work, not by a long shot. These are (mostly) studio recordings and while the sound is pretty good the interpretations are (mostly) missing the "Furtwangler magic." The exception is the 9th, recorded live at the reopening of the Bayreuth Festival after WWII. It is, along with Tristan, probably the best known of Furtwangler's recordings and clearly shows what the shouting is all about. And the sound is pretty good, way better than the WWII 9th.



On CD.

It is one of the first Furtwangler recordings I bought after I discovered him on a NPR radio show driving to work one morning.

I feel like "Preludes" are classical music's pop songs. They are short, simple (in construction, definitely not simple to play)  and tuneful. A lot of composers, esp. pianist-composers, wrote them but the ones that have stuck in the standard repertoire start with Bach (plus bonus fugues) and include Chopin, Debussy and of course Rachmaninoff.



16/44 FLAC download.

The c-sharp Minor Prelude is probably the closest competition to the Moonlight Sonata for "most popular piano piece" but the composer hated it. Presumably because that is all anyone wanted him to play. But all 24 of them are well worth knowing.

A lot of people say Beethoven's Diabelli Variations is the composer's greatest keyboard composition. It certainly is an impressive tour du force of imagination and technique, but I struggle to make sense of it musically.



16/44 FLAC download

Stephen Kovacevich does a great job of presenting it as more than just the sum of its parts.

The current fashion is to play Bruckner's monumental 8th symphony with the reverence and solemnity typically reserved for Bach's Passions. But that hasn't always been the case.



On CD.

A couple generations ago conductors like Eugen Jochum took a more lyrical approach to the 8th. While the big moments certainly get their due, the overall effect less prayerful, more picnic. And the early stereo sound on this CD is excellent.

There are a lot of ways to play the trumpet. From what I call "Miles Davis sloppy" (my jazzer friends hate it when I say this) to bell like clarity. Ludwig Guttler is definitely from the latter school and combines perfect technique, glorious tone and a lyrical, almost singing quality to his playing.



On CD

This box is a great collection of baroque music and top shelf musicianship.

The conventional wisdom is the "best" Haydn symphonies have names. I feel like this is wrong on two levels, one because all the Haydn symphonies are good, and one of the most popular is known only as No. 88.



16/44 FLAC download

Antal Dorati's recording of all 104 Haydn symphonies is one of the great, and greatly underappreciated, triumphs in the history of the gramophone. As well as three dozen hours of some of the most relentlessly wonderful music ever written.

When I first started collecting classical recordings, in the late 70s, "authentic" or "historically informed" performance was on the lunatic fringe. Today it is the rule, not the exception. So with that in mind, what is more historically informed then a recording of Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe conducted by the guy who led the world premier in 1912 but recorded in classic Decca stereo sound?



16/44 FLAC download.

I don't know that Pierre Monteux's late 50s recording is any better than e.g. Munch or Cluytens or Dutoit but it is very good. To me it sounds a little more modern and less danceable than the norm.

How do you like your Bach? Mischa Maisky's turn of the century remake of the Bach Cello Suites might be called the Maisky Cello Suites, loosely based on those of J.S. Bach. I'm not saying they are bad, far from it, but they would not be immediately recognizable as Bach either, if you didn't already know the pieces. Tchaikovsky would be a good guess.



On CD from the Mischa Maisky Box.

Not my favorite thing on the menu, but I'll order it from time to time.

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Yes, Sibelius was an "interesting" guy in addition to being one of my favorite composers. He became a national hero of sorts at a young age after composing Finlandia, which became the unofficial Finish national anthem. He was very successful, both artistically and financially during his lifetime but around the time he turned sixty he just stopped composing or even speaking about music and lived for another 30 years in relative isolation.

One of my favorite pieces is the second of the Lemminkainen Suites, commonly known as The Swan of Tuonela.



On CD.

Eugene Ormandy was friends with Sibelius and the Philadelphia Orchestra always plays the composer's music beautifully.

Hi, James - the "Swan of Tuonela" was my favorite part of the Lemminkainen Suite.

I moved on to a different 20th century composer, and on my initial listen I thought I was hearing a lot of atonality (but in a good way!).  Which made me look up quickly what Stravinsky wrote that was atonal, and came up with "Firebird" (my internet source was wrong, because it is not atonal.  But it does seem complex harmonically).

So I went to my Stravinsky box set, "The Complete Columbia Album Collection:"



So I listened to Stravinsky conducting the Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra of New York, from 1946 from that box set:



My internet source was wrong (who would have thought it!) - it is not atonal.  But I am glad for getting diverted to this, because I am really liking it.  I think I will continue on this detour and check out some of Stravinsky's other ballet music from this time (about 1910 to 1913).

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Wait, the internet was wrong about something?!?! .

I would characterize most of what Stravinsky wrote as expressionistic and chromatic, so at least atonalish, but definitely not serial 12-tone. Meaning it was mostly based on triadic harmony, just not in clearly defined keys. Same as e.g. Bartok or Ravel. But at the end of his life he did get around to writing (more or less) 12-tone, atonal music. However being Stravinsky he put his own spin on it and it sounds very different from e.g. Schoenberg's 12-tone compositions. The one I know and like is his ballet Agon.



On CD.

A lot of people swear by Stravinsky's recordings of his own music, but I agree with Leonard Bernstein: Stravinsky was a great composer and a bad conductor. For Agon I like Robert Craft's recording on Naxos.

There is a story, almost certainly apocryphal, that at a Parisian soiree the grande dame sitting next to Stravinsky thanked him for writing her favorite piece, Scheherazade. When Stravinsky explained he did not in fact write Scheherazade the lady allegedly replied "Oh, all you composers are so modest."

Stravinsky might not have written Scheherazade, but he did study with Rimsky-Korsakov, and I think you can hear at least a little Scheherazade in Firebird.

If you want to hear a lot of Scheherazade there is no shortage of recordings. Pretty much everyone does it and since it is one of the great orchestral showpieces in the repertoire everyone involved is typically on their best behavior. The Mehta/LA recording doesn't have the cachet of e.g. Reiner or Beecham but it is excellent, and excellently recorded in classic Decca analog sound.



On CD

I'm finishing my foray into Stravinsky ballet music with "The Rite of Spring" performed by the Columbia Symphony Orchestra conducted by Stravinsky:



I am consistently finding I like Stravinsky, and all the ballet music that I've listened to in the last few days has been enjoyable (I hesitate to say I understand all the music, but none of has felt inaccessible to me, unlike some 20th century music).  

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Excellent! I've heard of Weller's Prokofiev but never heard it, so interested in your impressions. The 1st and 5th symphonies are popular, but in general the symphonies are not his best work. Better is the piano music, the sonatas and concertos, and music for films and ballets: Alexander Nevsky, Lieutenant Kiji, Cinderella and of course Romeo and Juliet.

For me, I've been dealing with a bit of BDD, Brahms Deficient Disorder.



On CD

Brahms, like Mozart, was seduced by the clarinet late in life and actually came out of retirement to write music for the instrument. The two sonatas for clarinet and piano were almost the last thing he wrote. As a recovering clarinetist myself I can tell you that while these pieces sound pretty easy they are in fact fiendishly difficult to play.