Sony Essential Classics

[MN Dave]

Remember these babies? I sort of relied on them to bulk up my collection back in the day. Any favorites?
https://www.discogs.com/label/253180-Essential-Classics

[vers la flamme]

I have a bunch of these. So much great Ormandy and Szell, and soloists like Philippe Entremont, etc. One of the best ones is the Szell Mahler 4th, the Szell Schubert 8/9, and the Entremont/Ormandy Ravel and Gershwin PCs.

[MN Dave]

I have a bunch of these. So much great Ormandy and Szell, and soloists like Philippe Entremont, etc. One of the best ones is the Szell Mahler 4th, the Szell Schubert 8/9, and the Entremont/Ormandy Ravel and Gershwin PCs.

I will access these immediately. Thanks.

One of my favorites is LvB Concerto For Violin And Orchestra In D Major, Sibelius Concerto For Violin And Orchestra In D Minor, Op.47

[MN Dave]

I remember buying the five Beethoven piano concertos with Leon Fleisher, Szell, Cleveland - as a LP boxset.  For years, decades, maybe, it was the only way I listened to these works.



They were later issued as a 3CD set coupled with the Triple Concerto as an Essential Classics

Yes! That's some great Beethoven!

[bhodges]

1,000% to all, but especially to those old Cleveland recordings.

--Bruce

[Jo498]

They came a little bit too late for me as I already had a lot of standard repertoire in the early 1990s from other sources but they were a welcome edition (and sometimes incredibly good value as unlike most other cheapo series they had decent booklets). So my favs are not necessarily from good old times >25 years ago but sometimes acquired much later. Now they have been mostly replaced by the "white boxes"

Beethoven: Late Piano Sonatas Rosen
Bach: Goldberg variations Rosen
Bach: Trio sonatas Power Biggs
Dvorak: piano quintet/American Quartet Juilliard/Firkusny
Haydn: Late symphonies with Szell
Hindemith/Walton: Mathis, Metamorphoses, Variations Szell/Ormandy
Mozart: Piano concertos Casadesus/Szell
Tchaikovsky 5th symphony, violin concerto etc. Szell/Ormandy etc.

[ritter]

...
Beethoven: Late Piano Sonatas Rosen
Bach: Goldberg variations Rosen
Bach: Trio sonatas Power Biggs
Dvorak: piano quintet/American Quartet Juilliard/Firkusny
Haydn: Late symphonies with Szell
Hindemith/Walton: Mathis, Metamorphoses, Variations Szell/Ormandy
Mozart: Piano concertos Casadesus/Szell
Tchaikovsky 5th symphony, violin concerto etc. Szell/Ormandy etc.

How curious, I too have the bolded ones in my collection. The only other one that comes to mind right now is Robert Craft's recording of Monteverdi's Vespro (coupled with two Bach cantatas), which AFAIK was never released on CD in any other form.

[Jo498]

I am wondering if they largely kept some prominent musicians who were eventually honored with their own "editions" out of that cheapo essential classics, namely Bernstein, Gould, Boulez.
I found a few more Essential classics going through some shelves
Brahms piano concerto #1 Serkin/Szell
Mendelssohn Concerti with Serkin and Stern
Bruch/Lalo/Vieuxtemps violin works with Zukerman
Schubert: Schöne Müllerin with Haefliger (this was my first recording of that piece)
Sibelius: Symphonies 2+7 Ormandy

[aukhawk]

Bach; Cello Suites; Anner Bylsma (his earlier and IMHO preferable recording)
Bach; The Art of Fugue; Canada Brass Ensemble

[Gurn Blanston]

When I first started buying CD's in the early '90's, these had the dual virtue of being locally available as well as affordable. As a result they were my first exposure to big-time (albeit already non-current) classical recordings. Some of my favorites included:

Mendelssohn Piano Concertos (Serkin/Ormandy) and Violin Concerto (Stern/Columbia)
Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto (Oistrakh/Ormandy) and PC #1 (Gilels)
Dvorak Violin Concerto (Stern Ormandy) and Cello Concerto (Rose/Ormandy)
Dvorak  Slavonic Dances (Szell/Cleveland)
Haydn String Quartets Op 76 (Tokyo Quartet)
Mozart Symphonies, 35, 40 & 41 (Szell / Cleveland)

And many more that memory doesn't allow me to instantly recall. The concertos with Ormandy were always especially outstanding, they had the best soloists of the time, and played the hell out of the accompaniment. All this was before I discovered HIP, of course....

[Sergeant Rock]

Some of my favorite "Essentials"








Sarge

[MusicTurner]

I've got at least Entremont in Rachmaninov Paganini-Rhapsody & Ctos 1+4 (good and underrated IMO), Casadesus/Szell in a Mozart Ctos CD, the Dvorak Violin + Cello Concertos, maybe some additional ones too.

I've got much more stuff on LPs, and on the CBS-Sony CD 'Royal Collection', though.

[vers la flamme]

Some of my favorite "Essentials"





Sarge

I have these both (the first in a different, non-"Essential Classics" guise) and I concur that both are great. I'm listening to Szell's Lohengrin Prelude now actually. What a performance! This stuff was my introduction to Wagner and still about as far as I go on a regular basis with his music.

[Sergeant Rock]

I'm listening to Szell's Lohengrin Prelude now actually. What a performance!

Indeed, a great one. I heard Szell and the Cleveland perform that in 1969 at Blossom (my first time there). A perfect opening to a perfect concert (the Lohengrin Prelude, Mozart Piano Concerto 21 with Curzon and Brahms 4). Absolutely memorable evening.

Sarge

[71 dB]

I have always hated deeply the cover art of this series. It's pretty much the antithesis of my taste. Some off the things I hate:

- The color gradient background => cheap trick to make things look "fancy", but for my eyes it looks silly.
- Unnecessory stuff such as the trapezoid bars in the bottom (and they even use gradient colors to make it extra silly!)
- Unnecessory Italic font.
- The blue "ESSENTIAL CLASSICS" logo is HUGE! It could be the width of the Sony logo and under it. Now the blue background color become dominant color and starts to fight with other dominant colors in the cover often.
- Margins and distances of different objects is amateurish so that the cover art doen't look balanced. Visual rhythm is poor.
- The upper left corner logos "Opera", "Orchestral", "Solo Piano" makes me feel like an idiot who doesn't know Beethoven's late piano sonatas are solo piano music! Are these CDs for 8 years olds?

For these reason the result is a total mess to my eyes I would expect from the package of an electronic tool, but not from a classical music CD.

[Jo498]

You are completely right, they are mostly ugly. And not even so ugly in a fun geeky nostalgic way as some others.

[j winter]

They've redone a lot of the covers in a different style.  For example, this is the most recent one I've picked up -- the repertoire is not my usual cup of tea, but for someone wanting a good sampling or introduction to this music, this is both excellent and cheaper than lunch at McDonald's...



I've bought many wonderful recordings from this series over the years... I'll whole-heartedly second Sarge's choices, particularly the Szell Wagner overtures, which are by far my favorite recordings of these... of course I imprinted on a lot of these recordings years ago, which is why I have the big Szell and Walter boxes on my shelf...

Personally I always preferred the cover art on the Great Performances re-issues (of many of these same recordings), but I know that's a minority opinion, and largely nostalgia talking...

[Jo498]

The Great performances covers are also ugly but in a fun geeky nostalgic way, although admittedly not really for me personally as they were not common when and where I started buying CDs.

[Karl Henning]

The Great performances covers are also ugly but in a fun geeky nostalgic way, although admittedly not really for me personally as they were not common when and where I started buying CDs.

They just re-used the newsprint LP covers

[vers la flamme]

I'm OK with the "Essential Classics" covers but I HATE the newspaper covers of the "Great Performances" series. I refuse to buy one.