Your First Classical Music CD/LP

[USMC1960s]

Mine I remember well. Mozart--Horn Concertos--Otto Klemperer--LP--I think it was on Angel Records.

I bought it around 1970 or so.

Every time I hear any of his 4 horn concertos I think of that album from long ago. I know, it's "concerti" but even the CDs call them Concertos.

[Gurn Blanston]

~1962 (I was 10), my father gave me an LP with Haydn's Symphony #100 on one side, and #94 on the other. I wore it out, along with other records of other genres, and obviously never forgot how much I liked it. Big influence on me, to say the least.

[Scion7]

Not sure - in England, you could sit in a booth in most shoppes and listen to a record before you bought it.

I want to say it was Beethoven's 5th piano concerto - or some Bach record - something along those lines.
Brahms and Vivaldi were early favorites - as was Prokofiev.
Moving to the States was when I began a serious record collection - hooking up with Blue Angel and Square Deal Records' catalogues and joining the MHS after 1971.

[Mirror Image]

First classical recording I bought was Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra (coupled w/ Music for Strings, Percussion, & Celesta and Hungarian Sketches) with Fritz Reiner at the helm conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on that Living Stereo series on RCA. Still one of my favorite recordings of anything to this day.

[Daverz]

First classical recording I bought was Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra (coupled w/ Music for Strings, Percussion, & Celesta and Hungarian Sketches) with Fritz Reiner at the helm conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra on that Living Stereo series on RCA. Still one of my favorite recordings of anything to this day.

The Reiner Concerto for Orchestra was also one of my earliest classical Lp purchases:



I've heard complaints about this cover, but I thought it was pretty cool at the time.

[Mirror Image]

The Reiner Concerto for Orchestra was also one of my earliest classical Lp purchases:



I've heard complaints about this cover, but I thought it was pretty cool at the time.

Very cool. I can't say I like the cover, but I've certainly seen a lot worse.

[Scion7]

I think that's a pretty cool cover - actual artwork!

[Jo498]

My parents had a bunch of classical LPs and my father bought some more when I started to become interested in the genre. A very mixed bag, e.g. Schubert's 5+8 with Boehm, Beethoven 6 and 9 with Karajan, Magic flute highlights with Fricsay, several with popular opera choruses, marches, Nutcracker suite, Bach organ works, trumpet concerti, the Brandenburgs in Harnoncourt's early recording, Handel's water/fireworks. A bunch of those was an English language "Great library of classical music" or so with recordings from Vox and other cheapo labels and sometimes not very good pressings either. Among them was Beethoven's 5th and Mozart's last piano concerto in Brendel's early 60s recordings.

I don't think I bought any classical LPs myself, except one with Bach cantatas I gave my mother for Xmas.
For about a year or so (in 1987/88) I bought a few cassette tapes: Mozart 40/41 with Klemperer, Beethoven Tripel/Brahms double with Fricsay/Schneiderhan etc, Beethoven's violin concerto with Hoelscher/Vonk and I got Beethoven's 5th with Kleiber as a birthday present. But it was obvious that CD was the coming medium so we got our dad to buy one for the family. The first CD I bought (I still have it) was Beethoven's piano concertos 3+4 with Ashkenazy/Solti on Decca Ovation (the 2nd and 3rd CDs I bought I have given away since, it was Beethoven's sonatas op.31/2, op.106, 111 and the 5th piano concerto with Kempff/DG). All these were bought in late fall or early winter 1988.

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[amw]

My parents had a lot of LPs, cassettes and CDs when I was born, and proceeded to acquire many more (I recall a lot of cheap CDs from Point Classics that only listed performers in tiny type at the bottom of the back cover, for instance). I'm not sure what the first one was that was specifically for me but I think it was this one:


(The year was... 1998? I would have been about 7 at the time)

The first CD I bought with my own money was, I think, this one

but that hardly counts since I'd been raiding libraries for years already rather than buying anything.

[ritter]

The first classical LP that was " mine" (as opposed to part of my parents' collection--which was not small) was these selections of Otto Klemperer's The Magic Flute (I must have been around 6 at the time):



The first classical LP I remember buying myself (or rather, asked my dad to by for me) was Karajan's Das Rheingold, around 1977:

[Sergeant Rock]

In 1965 (I was 16) I saw a Bernstein Young People's Concert on tv (Musical Atoms: A Study of Intervals) which featured the Vaughan Williams Fourth. I fell in love and tried to get a recording of the Symphony. No luck (classical selection was very limited in my area). But I did find and buy the RVW Eighth coupled with Elgar's Enigma, Barbirolli conducting the Hallé. I still have the LP.




Sarge

[some guy]

My parents had a few discs of Hollywood music, Percy Faith, Perry Como, Mantovani, 101 Strings. Neither of them spent any time listening to music.

My first classical music (aside from the snippets in Warner Bros cartoons) came not as a a single disc but as a box of 78s. Classical music, movie soundtracks (Exodus was my favorite), jazz, and some Bing Crosby.

The classical music really snagged my ear. Here was a whole new world of sound that was more various and more engaging than anything I'd heard up to that point. I plunged right in and have been happily splashing around ever since. That was around the same time as Gurn's first adventure.

I had one other life altering experience with music about ten years later. The first I don't remember. Early sixties, anyway. The second was March of 1972. That's when I first experienced twentieth century music as such. It was like a whole 'nother ocean to splash around in. Bartok->Stravinsky->Carter->electronic music. All in the space of a few months. At least that's how I remember it. The pace might have been a little more leisurely. All I know for sure is that by 1984, I was pretty well caught up. Listening to things from 1984. So I must have gone through the century pretty quickly.

Well, it's fun. That's all. Not to brag, just to illustrate how fun it's all been. And continues to be. (In 2009, I attended over three hundred concerts around the world. My favorite year so far. )

[ZauberdrachenNr.7]

A 99 cent budget LP of Dvořák's New World Symphony, conducted by Antal Dorati and in mono, no less.  I played it and played it and played it some more.  But what did it mean? I was super-conscious of my advancing teen years and knew that my own brave New World was knocking at the door and the symphony seemed to be depict all the challenges and adventures that loomed ahead.  Months later my high school German teacher (now, sadly departed) loaned me his LvB 6th, Kapitan Karajan in charge.  Bowled me over.  Visits to the public library increased when I discovered they had interesting LPs of music well worth the listen:  my brother used to make fun of me for listening to an album 'titled : Debussy-Ravel-Ibert - is that the French version of Crosby, Stills & Nash, he wondered?

[The new erato]

I don't know exactly what was the first, either Bøhm's Bruckner 4 on DG, Mussorgsky Pictures on Supraphon or another Supraphon with Honegger/Shostakovitch (no 1) cello concertos. All on early 70ies LPS.

Imagine in those days the only chance to hear this music was more or less to buy an LP unless you were lucky enough to hear it in an actual concert (as I was with Bruckner 4) or stumble on an AM station that sent it (the selection of channels in Norway was dismal, and for long range broadcasting on foreign stations the quality was dismal).

I spent quite some time exchanging LP albums with friends (and taping them on reel-to-reel, this was before cassettes), or borrowing and/or listening at the local Library.

[Jo498]

I think I had 50 or more cassette tapes with classical music from the radio (which was pretty good in late 1980s Germany) and friends' CDs (or still LPs). Of course, I had only a few friends nerdy enough for classical music...

[Brian]

My parents had an extensive classical collection, so starting at age 12 I started buying whatever they didn't have already. (For example, they somehow didn't have the Brahms symphonies.)

First purchase in general was an "Immortal Beethoven" 2 cassette tape set of random highlights, with artists like Anton Nanut. My favorite part was the scherzo of Symphony No. 9. Image from Amazon:



First CDs were on my 11th birthday, I think? And they were these four things, all given by my grandmother from my late grandfather's collection (he died in 1992 or 1993 but already had several hundred CDs, ranging from Mantovani to an early BIS recording of baroque flute sonatas!).

- Rimsky-Korsakov: Capriccio & Overtures (Mexico State SO, Enrique Batiz)
- 1812 and other Tchaikovsky (OSM, Charles Dutoit)
- the same Brahms Hungarian Dances CD my parents already had, which was an unfortunate mix-up
- I can't remember the fourth one.


The Montreal/Dutoit 1812 Overture is really odd, by the way. It's going great until the hymn statement at the very end, when he overlays a ton of synthesizer!

[Jay F]

It all started for me when I heard Schubert's Piano Sonata 960 in a record store in 1987. CDs were the new thing, and I bought it, by Brendel on Philips Silverline label, along with Brendel's Mozart PCs 23/27 and HvK's 1977 Beethoven 9, because they were having a "3 for $25" sale, foreshadowing what was to come.

[San Antone]

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.

[bhodges]

Growing up in Texas, my parents had a modest classical collection (200 recordings?), and my mother took us to concerts now and then. The one that made a huge impression was in Dallas: Donald Johanos conducting the DSO in Respighi's The Pines of Rome. My violin teacher at the time played in the orchestra, and a few weeks later gave me the recording below, with Sir Malcom Sargent and the LSO.

I haven't heard it in years, but I recall that the performance is good (Muti is my current fave in this piece) and the sonics are impressive, considering it was recorded in 1959-60.

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--Bruce

[Pat B]

I think my first classical recordings were CBS Great Performances cassettes of Beethoven 5+Schubert 8 (Bernstein) and Beethoven 9 (Ormandy). That was probably 1987.

I switched to CDs when my family got a player in 1988 or 1989.