Your Favorite Vox Recordings

[Roasted Swan]

One other thing as it comes to classical music is it's audiophiles that seem to hyper focus on labels, presumably as you could then collect the ones with great recording quality without having as much concern for the music. Another reason that label oriented discussion seems to puzzle me.

I suppose records labels like tree rings date us!  I'm no audiophile (sadly can't afford the hardware to become one) but the reason I enjoy a thread like this one for Vox is just good old nostalgia.  At the time I started collecting LP's then the bargain labels were fairly rare and the repertoire they had on them pretty mundane.  Vox/Turnabout stood out for having some really unusual music at a price I could afford.  So for me I always have an affection for these discs both as "first love" performances but also as the gateways to other repertoire and indeed performers.  There'd be a much smaller Aaron Rosand discography without Vox and likewise Ponti bashing his way through Romantic Rare Piano Concerti.  Vox/Turnabout really was a specialist/niche label before such things existed generally.  What I find heartening is the way so many of these older recordings have stood the test of time.  Not the most polished, not the best recorded but they still have something to say

[MusicTurner]

When I worked in a classical record shop, in the mid-80s, we once got an offer of selecting from the Vox/Cum Laude/Candide/Turnabout LP catalogue in huge quantities, for $1 a piece, shipped in a container. So we really stocked up. And before that, the label had had quite good availability in Denmark too, albeit always arriving in big, unforeseeable deliveries. The Medtner 3rd Concerto/Ponti was one of my first LPs, after I saw it in a Copenhagen FONA record shop, having read about it being a masterpiece in a old, highly detailed Larousse encyclopedia of classical music. I've always cherished that one a lot.

[Pohjolas Daughter]

I suppose records labels like tree rings date us!

    I dare not think about how many rings I would have!

PD

[Pohjolas Daughter]

When I worked in a classical record shop, in the mid-80s, we once got an offer of selecting from the Vox/Cum Laude/Candide/Turnabout LP catalogue in huge quantities, for $1 a piece, shipped in a container. So we really stocked up. And before that, the label had had quite good availability in Denmark too, albeit always arriving in big, unforeseeable deliveries. The Medtner 3rd Concerto/Ponti was one of my first LPs, after I saw it in a Copenhagen FONA record shop, having read about it being a masterpiece in a old, highly detailed Larousse encyclopedia of classical music. I've always cherished that one a lot.

Oooh!  Temptation!

PD

[Jo498]

The labels started getting swallowed up by conglomerations by the early 90s, so it starts to become a bit meaningless. For instance Arrau recording on Philips, but then in the mid to late 90s having his recordings reissued under Decca, and finally the huge Arrau box being called "American Decca." Even with the Horenstein I mentioned in this thread with the two Schoenberg works they were originally released on Turnabout, so was it even accurate for me to lump them in Vox, just because my 2 CD set is called "VoxBox."

All true, but regardless of this Labels were still treated as comparably important when I got into classical in the late 1980s. Even if this might have been half a leftover from the vinyl era and self-proclamation by the majors. Despite being under the roof of Universal, DG, Decca and Philips tried to keep their own profile at that time and they even had a free monthly? "magazine" announcing their new recordings. And later both the cheap labels like Naxos and the independents like Hyperion did have brand identities and reputations.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

I am curious about this recording. If anybody has it, please let me know your opinion.

[staxomega]

I suppose records labels like tree rings date us!  I'm no audiophile (sadly can't afford the hardware to become one) but the reason I enjoy a thread like this one for Vox is just good old nostalgia.  At the time I started collecting LP's then the bargain labels were fairly rare and the repertoire they had on them pretty mundane.  Vox/Turnabout stood out for having some really unusual music at a price I could afford.  So for me I always have an affection for these discs both as "first love" performances but also as the gateways to other repertoire and indeed performers.  There'd be a much smaller Aaron Rosand discography without Vox and likewise Ponti bashing his way through Romantic Rare Piano Concerti.  Vox/Turnabout really was a specialist/niche label before such things existed generally.  What I find heartening is the way so many of these older recordings have stood the test of time.  Not the most polished, not the best recorded but they still have something to say

All reasonable and things I'd agree with. I'm certainly nostalgic about pieces that introduced me to works, even if I have now moved on from them interpretation wise.

All true, but regardless of this Labels were still treated as comparably important when I got into classical in the late 1980s. Even if this might have been half a leftover from the vinyl era and self-proclamation by the majors. Despite being under the roof of Universal, DG, Decca and Philips tried to keep their own profile at that time and they even had a free monthly? "magazine" announcing their new recordings. And later both the cheap labels like Naxos and the independents like Hyperion did have brand identities and reputations.

Yes, I'm a bit more label conscious of things that would have been from the CD era. Another reason I tend to not keep much of this label information at the forefront of my mind is I listen to a lot of historical recordings, and there is no way I'd be able to keep track of all those labels and what they'd eventually dissolve into in the LP era, which then further dissolved into something else in the CD era. This is all one grand way of saying I'm just projecting my own beliefs on others Everyone is free to keep track of things how they'd like.

In terms of Universal era Decca, DG, etc I don't really see a great distinction with them either, seems like they're all just running on some legacy name for brand recognition. A modern recording on Decca could sound fantastic or it could be subpar. You can't even use the old Decca generalizations of anticipating superior sound compared to a DG recording, because there are no more "DG engineers" or "Decca engineers."

One more example, and then I'll stop beating this dead horse. I downloaded this compilation of Markevitch Beethoven symphonies under the DG banner. Listened to it a couple of times, deleted it from my drive, and added it to my buy list. It ended up going out of print, later Eloquence reissued a DG Markevitch box. I was wondering why only ~ half the Beethoven symphonies were present on Eloquence's DG box. As it turns out the other half were originally on Decca, Philips or whatever you call it, so they were on the other Eloquence box of his Philips recordings, so completely meaningless for the earlier box to have used the DG banner.

[Pohjolas Daughter]

All reasonable and things I'd agree with. I'm certainly nostalgic about pieces that introduced me to works, even if I have now moved on from them interpretation wise.

Yes, I'm a bit more label conscious of things that would have been from the CD era. Another reason I tend to not keep much of this label information at the forefront of my mind is I listen to a lot of historical recordings, and there is no way I'd be able to keep track of all those labels and what they'd eventually dissolve into in the LP era, which then further dissolved into something else in the CD era. This is all one grand way of saying I'm just projecting my own beliefs on others Everyone is free to keep track of things how they'd like.

In terms of Universal era Decca, DG, etc I don't really see a great distinction with them either, seems like they're all just running on some legacy name for brand recognition. A modern recording on Decca could sound fantastic or it could be subpar. You can't even use the old Decca generalizations of anticipating superior sound compared to a DG recording, because there are no more "DG engineers" or "Decca engineers."

One more example, and then I'll stop beating this dead horse. I downloaded this compilation of Markevitch Beethoven symphonies under the DG banner. Listened to it a couple of times, deleted it from my drive, and added it to my buy list. It ended up going out of print, later Eloquence reissued a DG Markevitch box. I was wondering why only ~ half the Beethoven symphonies were present on Eloquence's DG box. As it turns out the other half were originally on Decca, Philips or whatever you call it, so they were on the other Eloquence box of his Philips recordings, so completely meaningless for the earlier box to have used the DG banner.

Out of curiosity, why did you delete it from your drive?  Had you paid for it on a format that you found too compressed?  Just a bit surprised that you would have ridden yourself of it before getting a physical format.

PD

[staxomega]

Out of curiosity, why did you delete it from your drive?  Had you paid for it on a format that you found too compressed?  Just a bit surprised that you would have ridden yourself of it before getting a physical format.

PD

Just so I wasn't pirating anything. I think labels like Eloquence are putting out great reissues that are worth supporting.

edit: the whole piracy thing can be a bit contentious - I mostly stick to streaming, but I have some pretty spotty cell phone reception in places so I sometimes find "other means" to download music to my phone to sample the performances. Or I'll download it if the release isn't on streaming. I'll always end up deleting them one way or another, either I didn't like the performances or I did and I'll buy a legitimate copy.

Where I strongly disagree with piracy is the argument that I am pirating it because I couldn't afford it in the first place. I think this is a pretty weak stance and have seen first hand one game developer posting a graph of their sales, then when it is released to a platform that has no DRM there is a very sharp drop in sales. If people want to pirate things, just flat out say so, don't justify it with something to make yourself feel better.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Thanks to the recommendations from several members, I am listening to the Rudolf Firkusny set nowadays. Nice touch and excellent recording.

[Daverz]

I am curious about this recording. If anybody has it, please let me know your opinion.

I'd have to remind myself about the others, but I really like the Lees concerto, but the Oliveira recording, not this one. 

[Pohjolas Daughter]

Thanks to the recommendations from several members, I am listening to the Rudolf Firkusny set nowadays. Nice touch and excellent recording.

Glad that you have been enjoying it DB! 

PD

[geralmar]

Jonel Perlea, Bamberg Symphony

Schubert Symphony #9
Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique
Tchaikovsky Nutcracker Suite

In the early days of the CD I read an interview with Vox founder George Mendelssohn-Bartholdy in which he stated he was not interested in seeing much of the Vox catalogue transferred to CD because most of the recordings were old and had "served their purpose".  I suspect he would have included the Perlea recordings in this "do not resuscitate" group.  Most of the recordings in this thread are from the final, glory years of the label.