Hirez Classical Recordings worth getting

[Tyson]

I've got a modest standard rez classical collection, maybe 7,000 or so disks worth, and an even more modest hirez collection, around 2,000 titles.  Many are duplicates, so I can compare the hirez to the standard rez with relative ease.  What I have found is that modern recordings that are available in both standard rez and hirez sound pretty similar, with the hirez still sounding better overall, particularly with regard to soundstage and an overall sense of openness in the recording.

But its with older recordings that I find a particularly large improvement going to hirez.  The Beethoven Violin concerto played by Milstein, anything by Argerich or Pollini, old Furtwangler recordings (especially the RAI Rome Ring cycle on Japanese SHM), all are rather astonishingly better than their standard rez counterparts.  DG in particular has crappy redbook stuff that sounds WAY better on SACD.  I have one of the few PlayStation 3's in the country that allows ripping SACD's to my hirez music server, so I can listen to all of this on my fully active GR Research V2's or my Tesla T1 headphones, and it's always very, very clear when I switch from redbook to hirez.  This isn't really meant to bash standard rez, but rather to celebrate how incredible some of these older recordings can sound.  I'm reminded of the first time I saw a Chaplin film on Blu Ray (The Gold Rush), and how I was blown away that this incredibly old film could be so vivid, so engaging, so "new". 

[Tyson]

Hmm, not many hirez listeners here?  OK, then I will add a few more.  Karajan gets a bad rap, as does Solti, as does Szell.  In standard rez Karajan sounds like a very surface/beauty focused conductor, Solti sounds too driven and maniacal, and Szell sounds unfeeling but perfect in execution. 

In Hirez, ALL of these conductors gain an unexpected level of depth and feeling.  They still have their same overall basic sound, but there's a level of humanity and complexity that just isn't there in standard rez recordings.  Same thing with Heifetz.  Fast, yes.  Unfeeling?  No.

[JDWalley]

I'm trying to get my mind around the notion of 9,000 classical discs being "modest."  I've got only a little more than 2,000 total (classical and all other genres), and I still can only manage to house them by stacking them two- or three-deep on the shelves that make up far too much of our family room/media room!

[HIPster]

This one is pretty hi-rez:

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