Your First Classical Music CD/LP

[Ken B]

Bought the same day. Good to see these covers again!

[ZauberdrachenNr.7]

My first classical record came by accident.  A supermarket where my mother shopped was giving away records if a certain amount of groceries were bought.  One day she brought home a green boxed record that had Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade and the Beethoven 5th.  Both were quick favorites and started me off an a lifelong journey.

Yours in an excellent example of a pet theory/project of mine.  I dunno why record labels don't do this more - make some of their wares, esp. overstocks, available at little or even no cost to consumers at odd, out of the way venues, to infect them with classical music.  Drug dealers use this stratagem, and it apparently works for them, why not the classical music industry?

[Maestro267]

The first major purchase I made was the complete Beethoven symphonies. Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Riccardo Muti.

[Gurn Blanston]

Yours in an excellent example of a pet theory/project of mine.  I dunno why record labels don't do this more - make some of their wares, esp. overstocks, available at little or even no cost to consumers at odd, out of the way venues, to infect them with classical music.  Drug dealers use this stratagem, and it apparently works for them, why not the classical music industry?

My memory may be shaky on this, but isn't that how Brilliant got started in the business, selling decent box sets at 'lower than Naxos' prices in a chain of drug stores?  I thought it was brilliant at the time (no pun intended) and still do.

[Ken B]

My memory may be shaky on this, but isn't that how Brilliant got started in the business, selling decent box sets at 'lower than Naxos' prices in a chain of drug stores?  I thought it was brilliant at the time (no pun intended) and still do.

Yes. Big cubes of music dirt cheap. In drugstores etc.
I was dubious at first, until I saw how much great stuff they had licenced to stuff those boxes. The old old Dvorak and Haydn cubes were excellent.

[vandermolen]

My first classical LP was Rimsky-Korsakov's 'Scheherazade' Chicago SO, Fritz Reiner (RCA LP). My mother had an LP of this work which I liked but I wanted my own copy - the beginning of OCCDCD aged 14. 

[Daverz]

When I first started collecting in the early 80s there was still a dedicated classical record store in downtown San Diego.  i can't even remember the name of it now, but they had records organized by label and catalog number.  You found the record you wanted by looking it up in the Schwann Guide.

[ZauberdrachenNr.7]

My memory may be shaky on this, but isn't that how Brilliant got started in the business, selling decent box sets at 'lower than Naxos' prices in a chain of drug stores?  I thought it was brilliant at the time (no pun intended) and still do.

Well then, I want my "piece of the action"!   

[Walt Whitman]

My first "Classical" LP was a double: Handel's Messiah - Ormandy: Philadelphia Orchestra, Farrell, Warfield, et al.

From there, it was Bach's St. Matthew Passion in English - Bernstein: New York Philharmonic (I think that was a 3 album set).

Both purchased with money from my paper route, when I was a high school teen.

From those, branched more LPs of Ormandy: PO & Bernstein: NYP, and on and on from there.

And that little record in the Matthew's Passion of Bernstein describing Bach's dramatizing genius, which I believe was lifted from one of his Omnibus television presentations, opened my young eyes and ears to the depths of music to which its composers strive.

It continues to be a wonderful and rewarding journey!

[ConorWA]

This was my first Disc of classical music bought for me by my lady of the time (about 16 years ago) :



I still have the Disc for sentimental reasons.

[Holden]

Learning the piano as an 9 year old my parents bought me this LP because of my love for Beethoven. I had to play it from their 'radiogram' with a big mono speaker.



It was from the 50s mono set and it was a long while before I acquired another recording from this very famous set by WK. I now have the complete set on CD from DG.

[Pat B]

Bill looks a bit skeptical there.

[listener]

Box of 78's at a 2nd hand store that included R.Strauss' Don Juan and Wagner's Rienzi Overture, later some LP's including the Schumann Piano Concerto and Bach Brandenburg 4 because I had the Penguin Pocket scores.  Those are the memorable from many years ago.
aside: Isn't Windows 8 awful.  My laptop hard drive is on its last legs and the HP replacement came "free" using points and it's now unopenable because of a typing error.