Ten Classical Recordings That Stay Near Your CD Player

[Mirror Image]

What are ten classical recordings that stay near your CD player?

[Sammy]

For the last few weeks:

Bainton/Clifford String Quartets - Locrian Ensemble/Dutton
Brahms Works for Chorus & Orchestra - Herreweghe/PHI
Elgar Piano Quintet/Walton Piano Quartet - Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center/CMS Recordings
Liszt's Annees de Pelerinage - Chamayou/Naive
Pfitzner Orchestral Lieder - Begemann/Tausk/CPO
Saygun String Quartets - Quatuor Danel/CPO
Shebalin String Quartets/Vol. 3 - Krasni Quartet/Olympia
Slavic Heroes - Kwiecien/Borowicz/Harmonia Mundi
Walton String Quartets - Doric Quartet/Chandos
Zemlinsky's Lyric Symphony - Eschenbach/Capriccio

And a few all-time favorites are always close at hand:

Mozart - Great Mass in C minor/Leppard/EMI
Bach - St. Matthew Passion/Herreweghe/Harmonia Mundi (1st recording)
Bach - Well Tempered Clavier/Tureck/Deutsche Grammophon
Bach - Goldberg Variations/Hantai/Mirare
Myaskovsky/Weinberg - Violin Concertos/Yablonsky/Naxos
Handel - Eight Great Keyboard Sonatas/Ross/Erato
Scriabin/Shostakovich - Piano Preludes/Deyanova/Nimbus
Shostakovich - Op. 87 Preludes and Fugues/Nikolayeva/Melodiya
Beethoven - Cello Sonatas, Op. 5/Coin/Cohen/Harmonia Mundi

[mc ukrneal]

Interesting. I took this to mean what I keep close by all the time. Since most go into storage after being ripped, I don't really keep out many.

My list:
Hummel Piano Concertos Hough Chandos
Beethoven Piano Concertos Kempff (DG mono)
Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet Previn, EMI
Feta Morgana (Lehar pieces) on CPO
Fete du Ballet Decca
Grieg Peer Gynt (and others) on DG
Tchaikovsky Symphonies 4-6 Mravinsky DG
Rachmaninov Piano Concertos Ashkenazy Decca
Schubert Impromptus Brendel Philips
Burgmuller Symphony 1 Sterling

And that Mozart Mass that Sammy listed is a real gem, and would probably make it into the next list of 10-15. Others in the next 10 would be Beethoven concertos (Perahia), Tchaikovsky ballets, Tchaikovsky concertos, Rachmaninov symphonies, Light music, Offenbach, etc .

[DavidW]

I don't own a cd player!

[kishnevi]

Whatever relatively recent purchases have not been listened to, which is definitely more than 10.
After that it gets shelved either with a batch of other new arrivals or with some logical grouping (such as Haydn with other Haydn recordings).
Actually, a quick count reveals that Mount Doom (aka the Pile) comprises about thirty box sets, but no individual CDs at the moment, and about half a dozen operas on DVD.  (And two of those box sets are the Hanssler and Teldec Complete  Bach boxes, so Mount Doom will remain a Mount for some time to come, I think.)    If there's a favorite recording I want to listen to again, I can usually grab it quickly from the CD shelves, since everything is one relatively small room.

[Elgarian]

Some are always nearby (*); others come and go. 6 months ago there'd have been a lot of Haydn. However, this month:

Elgar: Spirit of England (Cahill/Gibson/Scottish National) *
Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier highlights (Gibson/Scottish National) *
Mozart: Box of piano concertos (Sofronitzki, Brendel, Immerseel, or Schmidt) *
Elgar: Violin concerto (could be any one of 15 or so) *
Wagner: Der Ring (most likely Solti, but they all get a turn - I do a lot of dipping) *
Mozart: Don Giovanni (either Jacobs - HIP - or Colin Davis - non-HIP)
Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade (could be almost any version of over a dozen, right now)
Beethoven: Violin sonatas (Suk/Panenka - currently starting to explore this new 4 CD box arrival)
Vivaldi: 18 CD Box of concertos & sonatas (I Solisti Veneti)
Holst: The Planets (Bernstein)

[Lethevich]

Probably forgetting some even more important recordings, but~

Bach - Well-Tempered Clavier (Woodward)*
Vasks - Violin Concerto, Symphony No.1 (Kremer)+
Haydn - Symphony No.42-44 (Goodman)+
Liszt - Piano Works (Bolet)+
Gernsheim - Piano Quintet No.1, 2 (Oganessian, Art Vio Quartet)*
Weinberg - Violin Sonatas (Kalnits, Csányi-Wills)*
Bantock - Hebridean Symphony, Celtic Symphony, etc (Handley)+
Vaughan Williams - Symphony No.2 [orig ver.] (Hickox)*
Bantock - Violin Sonata No.1, 2 (McAslan, Dussek)*
Shostakovich/Schnittke - Piano Quintets (Vermeer)+
Vaughan Williams - String Quartet No.2, Violin Sonata, Quintet, etc (Nash Ensemble)+

* = a discovery within the past year or two
+ = a longer term preference

[vandermolen]

Nice thread!

Currently:

Dyson: 'Quo Vadis'
Daniel Asia: Symphony 3
Glass: Kundun soundtrack
Stanley Bate: Symphony 4
Glazunov: The King of the Jews (Naxos)
Kabelac: Mystery of Time
Ben Haim: Symphony No 1 (CPO)
Rachmaninov: The Bells (Serebrier - great live recording)
Nystroem: Sinfonia del Mare (Musica Sveciae)
Vaughan Williams: Fantasia on the Old 104th

+ bonus CD: Symphonic works by Anatoly Lyadov (Svetlanov, Melodiya)

[madaboutmahler]

I imagine that my list would look something like at the moment:

Mahler 5, RCO/Chailly on Decca
Mahler 6, CSO/Solti on Decca
Elgar Symphonies, Solti on Decca
Elgar Enigma Variations etc, Bernstein on DG
Strauss Der Rosenkavalier Suite/Salome Tanz etc, Previn on DG
Dvorak Slavonic Dances, Chamber Orch of Europe/Harnoncourt on Teldec
Glazunov The Seasons/Concert Waltzes, Ansermet on Decca
Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet selections, BPO/Abbado on DG
Debussy Orchestral Works, Martinon on Brilliant
Schumann 4 Sawalisch on EMI.

Also, several Grainger miniatures I listen to every evening, from a nice little Grainger collection on Decca.

So, what's your list, John?

[Karl Henning]

Ten Classical Recordings That Stay Near [My] CD Player?  No such thing(s).  For short-ish periods of time, yes, I may well focus on returning to a single recording . . . but to do that beyond (say) a fortnight? Morbid!  There's a huge musical world out there!  Reject the funk! ; )

[vandermolen]

I imagine that my list would look something like at the moment:

Mahler 5, RCO/Chailly on Decca
Mahler 6, CSO/Solti on Decca
Elgar Symphonies, Solti on Decca
Elgar Enigma Variations etc, Bernstein on DG
Strauss Der Rosenkavalier Suite/Salome Tanz etc, Previn on DG
Dvorak Slavonic Dances, Chamber Orch of Europe/Harnoncourt on Teldec
Glazunov The Seasons/Concert Waltzes, Ansermet on Decca
Prokofiev Romeo and Juliet selections, BPO/Abbado on DG
Debussy Orchestral Works, Martinon on Brilliant
Schumann 4 Sawalisch on EMI.

Also, several Grainger miniatures I listen to every evening, from a nice little Grainger collection on Decca.

So, what's your list, John?

Ansermet's 'The Seasons' is a great performance of a fine work.

[Mirror Image]

So, what's your list, John?

This is a question I have pondered since this thread's inception. My list would probably look like this (in no particular order) right now:

1. Shostakovich: Symphony No. 5, Bernstein, NY Philharmonic, Sony (1979 performance)
2. Janacek: Glagolitic Mass, Sinfonietta, MTT, London Symphony Orch., Sony
3. Casella: Sinfonia "Symphony No. 3," Alun Francis, Cologne Radio Symphony Orch., CPO
4. Mahler: Symphony No. 7, Simon Rattle, CBSO, EMI
5. Koechlin: Vers la Voûte étoilée, Le Docteur Fabricius, Heinz Holliger, Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orch., Hanssler
6. Lindberg: Graffiti, Seht die Sonne, Sakari Oramo, Finnish Radio Symphony Orch., Ondine
7. Honegger: Symphonies 3 & 5, Pacific 231, Neeme Jarvi, Danish National Radio Symphony Orch., Chandos
8. Prokofiev: On the Dnieper, Michail Jurowski, Cologne Radio Symphony Orch., CPO
9. Berg: Violin Concerto, Anne Sophie Mutter, James Levine, Chicago Symphony Orch., DG
10. Ravel: Piano Concertos, Jean-Efflam Bavouzet, Yan Pascal Tortelier, BBC Symphony Orch., Chandos

[springrite]

5. Koechlin: Vers la Voûte étoilée, Le Docteur Fabricius, Heinz Holliger, Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orch., Hanssler

You must be debating whether to put this recording or Les Heures persanes?

[Mirror Image]

You must be debating whether to put this recording or Les Heures persanes?

Actually, I keep this recording and Zinman's recording of The Jungle Book pretty close by because these are probably my two favorite Koechlin discs. I do keep Holliger's performances of Le buisson ardent Parts I & II close by as well.

[Sergeant Rock]

Ten Classical Recordings That Stay Near [My] CD Player?  No such thing(s).  For short-ish periods of time, yes, I may well focus on returning to a single recording . . . but to do that beyond (say) a fortnight? Morbid!  There's a huge musical world out there!  Reject the funk! ; )

If I took the OP's question literally, I'd have to make a list of about 300 CDs. There are at least that many piled up on the floor around the player in my listening room (not the music library) awaiting new shelves.

But ten that have gotten multiple hearings, that have been in constant rotation for many months would include the Jerusalem's two CDs of Haydn quartets, the Apponyi's Haydn op.33, and several of Fey's Haydn symphonies. So the answer is: Haydn 

Sarge

[Marc]

Like Karl, I do not have such a 'list'.

I have a small radio/CD-player in the bedroom with a sometimes growing, sometimes diminishing amount of discs. In some cases, these discs do not even belong to my hardcore faves.
I only (ab)use them, laying on my back and listening, trying to 'grab' the music.

But of course, many of those discs do belong to my beloved ones. They consist largely of vocal, organ and harpsichord music from the Renaissance and Baroque period.

During the last 2 years, this disc is probably the most loyal one on my side of the bed 0:):



http://www.amazon.co.uk/Schitger-Hinsz-Freijtag-Orgel-Noordbroek-Leonore-Lub/dp/B003BKF6SM/

Leonore Lub playing an interesting and varied program on the beautiful Schnitger organ in the village church of Noordbroek, Groningen, NL.

[Sammy]

Do you know the label for the Lub recording?  The Amazon link doesn't offer it.

[Opus106]

Do you know the label for the Lub recording?  The Amazon link doesn't offer it.

The back-cover says "VLS Records".

http://www.vlsrecords.nl/vlc0305.html

[springrite]

Do you know the label for the Lub recording?  The Amazon link doesn't offer it.

VLS Records. I have never heard of this label before, though.

[Sammy]

The back-cover says "VLS Records".

http://www.vlsrecords.nl/vlc0305.html

Thank you.