Tam,
that's a nice list - some crossovers, but off the top of my head I would add or swap:
Beecham's Schubert symphonies which are a delight; the Quartetto Italiano for Beethoven (in addition to Takacs); Mravinsky for Tchaikovsky 4,5 & 6 (never got on with Bernstein's Tchaikovsky) and a mixture of Boult and Previn for the Vaughan Williams.

Also, irreplacable to me would be Arnold's Symphonic Dances on Lyrita; Perlman and Ashkenazy playing Beethoven's Kreutzer and Spring sonatas; Ferrier singing Bach & Handel; the Fitzwilliam playing Shostakovich's string quartets and Casals' and Edgar Meyer's very different approach to the Bach cello suites.

I like nic's question about other music types, but I would probably need a year and it would vary with mood, weather, season, time of day, etc. etc. etc.

Huw,

Most of the things you list, I have not heard - though having heard raves about the QT Italiano I am keen to check out their Beethoven. I would probably go for Boult VM too, having heard a little recently I know realise it was a mistake to choose Haitink's set over Boult's - I will rectify that at some point, but, for the moment, Haitink will do.

Ditto Ferrier, whom I love, but who is somewhat underrepresented in my library. I have the Perlman/Ashkenazy on vinyl and they are wonderful, but since my system is currently without its turntable (for reasons of space) I am not so well acquainted with them. I also have a disk of Kempff and, I can't off top of my head recall the violinist, which is also very nice.

Thanks for the recommnedation for the Shostakovich QTs, I keep meaning to pick up at set. Mind you, if I had a pound (or, more helpfully 10) for every cd I was meaning to pick up.... well,I might actually be able to buy a few more of them

As to the cello suites, I don't know Casals, though I do want to (since it is something of a landmark in the discography). The two sets I listed are my favourites, I also have Ma (technically lovely, but lacking a certain something) and a very nice set pe-zulu gave me (but I decided to pick just two and that, wondeful though it is fell by the wayside).

regards, Tam

regards, Tam

Tam,
funnily enough most of my discs mentioned here are on LP and represent those few that are also replicated as CDs. The only one that is CD only is Edgar Meyer's rendering of some of the Bach cello suites on bass. I am not sure if there is a vinyl copy available.
Huw

Further what I said above, the Bernstein VPO cycle of Beethoven symphonies (to which I am currently listening) should definitely have made the list, or, at least, 1&3 should.

regards, Tam

Dear Fredrik and Tam

I would like to revive this thread to thank for the interesting insight in the way, you have composed your CD (and LP?) collections. That a predominant share of Fredriks collection is made by Bach and Beethoven doesn�t surprise (it is true of me too), but else I must state, that apart from a few exceptions (a little other baroque and some 2000th century music), almost all of your collections is made up by Vienna-classical, romantic and late romantic music, - a relatively short period of time of the whole western musical history. So your taste is apparently relatively well-defined, if you can judge from the composition of your library.
Fredriks choice of recordings includes first and foremost recordings from 1940 to 1960, and I agree, as to the part of these recordings I actually know, that they, given the light of their background are largely unsurpassed. But I can�t avoid the feeling, that Fredriks taste reflects the interpretations he grew up with, and that he in some way is biased by them. I know this tendency all too well from myself and have fought a persistent but not always successful battle against it. E.g. the Beethoven pianosonatas of Kempff, the Beethoven piano-violinsonatas of Grumiaux/Haskil and Das Wohltemperierte Clavier and harpsichordsuites by Bach of Helmut Walcha. For a long time I thought these artists way of playing this music was the way, it must be played, nothing more and nothing less. Later though I began purposely to investigate radical different interpretations, and little by little they began to convince me more, and now I feel more free and have - whatever my personal taste - realized that most recordings range from excellent to good, and that only a minority are really bad. So when I listen to a recording, I try to capture the best of it and try to leave eventual weak points aside. Anything else would be an attempt to deny the possibility of renewal. Of course I don�t think renewal per se is synonymous with heightening of quality, but most often it represents an adding of other equally relevant points of view. In a number of cases � most predominantly in the case of my most favored works by Bach and Beethoven � I own multiple recordings, e.g. Beethoven piano sonatas, Bach Brandenburg concertos, Harpsichord concertos, Organ and Harpsichord music, Cello suites, striving to own a number of stylistically different quality-interpretations.

Posting my library is an almost impossible undertaking, but I can tell the relative share of some composers and some periods. Since my point of departure in music is the keyboard, half of my library consists of keyboard music. This is true of all periods except Medieval.
Another way to sum it up is this:
Medieval 10%
Renaissance 10%
Bach 45%
Other baroque music 15%
Beethoven 15%
Other Vienna class. and romantic 3%
2000th century 2%

If you want, I can post some of my most favored recordings within these categories.

Regards,

Dear pe-zulu,

I would love to see that.

Thanks from Fredrik

PS: You raise a point I have been fighting for a very long time - that of prefering performances that were early experiences.

Tomorrow I will post just what my course of action was, and how only partially successful it has been!

Dear pe-zulu,

Interesting post. To answer some of questions, all the records I have listed are CDs as opposed to vinyl (I do have some of the latter, but for the better part of the last year I have been without it in my system and I don't think I have any that is really important that isn't on CD).

Worth noting, as I think I already may have, that Fredrik's lists and mine differ significantly. His represents virtually his complete library whereas mine is what I might term the discs I couldn't bear to part with. In some areas, really quite a lot of trimming has gone on (particularly with the ring cycles and the Beethoven and Mahler symphonies, but I also chose not to include things like my Gardiner recordings of the Christmas Oratorio an the Matthew and John Passions, though I've got another recording of the Matthew on my to be listened to shelf, so I may reassess it then. I expect Fredrik and you have both rolled your eyes at that last bit! )

You're quite right about the limited scale of my library (mine even more so that Fredrik's, who has a lot more Baroque music than me). I have little, if any, early music. However, I think that and the baroque simply remain undeveloped because I haven't come to that yet, I have many years (hopefully) in which to do so.

I think we're probably all biased by the recordings we grew up with. One of my earliest classical CD purchases was Kempff's 50s mono Beethoven sonata cycle and I suspect that accounts largely for why I tend, to some extent, to use him as frame of reference when judging pianism. Similarly, I suspect that my love Bernstein comes from another early purchase (his recording of Mozart's 40th and 41st symphonies), ditto Solti. My obsession, as will be clear to those who read my posts, with Mackerras is probably from the fact that he's the conductor I've heard live the most and from the one or two occasions on which I've met him, when I have been greatly impressed.

Then again, I've recently come to appreciate Furtwangler, even though he differed quite a lot from many of the interpretations I grew up with.

I would, like Fredrik, be very interested to see that list of favourite recordings (on which I'm sure those excellent Zeuthen Bach cello suites would be - you may have noticed their absence from my list, not because I don't like them, but I had already decided to include Rostropovich and Schiff, and decided against listing three recordings).


regards, Tam

p.s. Also worth noting, as stated above, there are two significant sections of my library I have not yet got round to recording here (jazz and 'everything else'), I had intended to do that this weekend but in the end I was fairly busy with work....

As I said above that I would, I am posting the rest of my library. As I noted with the classical stuff, there was a lot of pruning, in terms of what I actually posting being the 'highlights' or rather, those things without which I wouldn't want to be. With the rest of the library this is somewhat different (mainly because in classical music one can have the situation of having, say, 12 complete cycles of Beethoven symphonies).

What I'm posting below I divide into 3 sections (as occurs on my own shelves): jazz, spoken word (a very small section and posted merely for completeness) and 'everything else' (which is mainly pop/rock but includes film soundtracks, shows/musicals and suchlike). The spoken word section is not pruned at all, the pruning in the 'everything else' section is very limited, the pruning in the jazz section is also very slight (that said, in the case of the Miles Davis box sets, in particular, I could do without some of the 'bonus discs' and alternate takes).

Worth also noting there are some very significant gaps I haven't got round to plugging yet (for example, the eagle-eyed will notice the absence of John Coltrane's 'A Love Supreme', I simply haven't got round to buying it yet!).

One last thing, if anyone is wondering about the order things are listed within each artist it is (generally) the order on the shelf, which is chronologically by album release (I'm very sad!). Sometimes, to make things easier, I've put box sets before or after (of course, due to size, I often keep them on a different shelf).

So, without further ado:

Jazz:

Louis Armstrong:
-Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man
-Meets Oscar Peterson
-Hot Five and Hot Seven
-Ella and Louis sing Gershwin (with Ella Fitzgerald)
-On the Sunny Side of the Street (the best of)
-Jazz Collector Edition
-Collection


Carla Bley:
-The Very Big Carla Bley Band
-Big Band Theory


Count Basie:
-April in Paris


John Coltrane:
-Giant Steps
-Blue Train
-The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings


Miles Davis:
-The Birth of the Cool
-Ascenseur Pour L'Echafaud
-Milestones
-Kind of Blue (actually I have four different versions, including vinyl)
-Seven Steps to Heaven
-Miles Davis At Carnegie Hall
-The Complete Concert
-ESP
-Miles Smiles
-In a Silent Way
-Bitches Brew
-Miles Davis at Filmore
-Live-Evil
-Pangaea
-You're Under Arrest
-Aura
-Doo-bop
-Panthalassa (Remixed by Bill Laswell)

-The Complete Prestige Recordings (1951-56)
-Miles Davis and John Coltrane (The Complete Recordings 1955-61)
-Miles Davis and Gil Evans (The Complete Studio Recordings)
-Seven Steps (The Complete Columbia Recordings of Miles Davis 1963-1964)
-The Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel (1965)
-Miles Davis Quintet (1965-68)
-The Complete In a Silent Way Sessions
-The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions
-The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions


Tommy Dorsey:
-Yes, Indeed!


Duke Ellington:
-Classical Ellington (Rattle/CBSO)


Don Ellis
-Electric Bath


Bill Evans:
-The Complete Riverside Recordings
-The Complete Bill Evans on Verve (the most stupidly designed box ever!)
-The Complete Fantasy Recordings
-The Secret Sessions
-New Conversations
-Affinity (with Toots Thielemans)
-The Paris Concert, Edition One
-The Paris Concert, Edition Two
-Turn out the Stars (The Final Village Vanguard Recordings, June 1980)


Stan Getz:
-The Complete Roost Recordings
-Focus
-Jazz Samba (with Charlie Byrd)
-Captain Marvel
-Sax Moods (The Very Best of Stan Getz)


Coleman Hawkins:
-Coleman Hawkins encounters Ben Webster


Billie Holiday:
-The Very Best of Billie Holiday


Stacey Kent:
-The Tender Trap


The Lincoln Centre Jazz Orchestra:
-Jazz at the Lincoln Centre: They Came to Swing


Rob McConnel (and the Boss Brass):
-The Brass is Back


Wynton Marsalis:
-Live at the Village Vanguard


Marcus Miller:
-M2


Modern Jazz Quartet:
-Dedicated to Connie


Thelonious Monk:
-Genius of Modern Music, Volume 2


Gerry Mulligan:
- The Complete Gerry Mulligan meets Ben Webster Sessions


Charlie Parker:
-South of the Border


Oscar Peterson:
-The Gershwin Songbooks
-Night Train
-Swinging Cooperations
-Piano Moods (The Very Best of Oscar Peterson)


Django Reinhardt:
-Le Quintette du Hot Clue be France, 1936-1937


Nina Simone:
-After Hours


Ben Webster:
-Ben Webster meets Oscar Peterson


Lester Young:
-Lester Young with Oscar Peterson



'everything else':

Tori Amos:
-Strange Little Girls (actually - I don't much care for this album, and I only want it for her cover of 'I don't like Mondays')


Beach Boys:
-Pet Sounds


The Beatles:
-Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
-The Beatles
-Abbey Road
-1962-66 (the 'Red' album)
-1967-70 (the 'blue' album)
-The Beatles Anthology, Vol 1
-The Beatles Anthology, Vol 2
-The Beatles Anthology, Vol 3


The Blue Man Group:
-Audio
-The Complex


James Bond (not really the artist, I know)
-The Best of James Bond, 30th Anniversary ltd edition
-Goldeneye soundtrack


Jeff Buckley:
-Grace


Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
-'Once More with Feeling' soundtrack


The Clash:
-London Calling


A Clockwork Orange Soundtrack


Leonard Cohen:
-The Songs of Leonard Cohen
-Songs from a Room
-Live Songs
-Songs of Love and Hate
-New Skin for Old Ceremony
-Death of a Ladies' Man
-Recent Songs
-Field Commander Cohen: Tour of 1979
-I'm Your Man
-The Future
-Live in Concert
-Ten New Songs
-Dear Heather
-I'm Your Fan (covers of Cohen songs)


Deep Blue Something:
-Home


Dire Straits:
-Sultans of Swing (The Very Best of)


Thomas Dolby:
-The Golden Age of Wireless
-The Flat Earth
-Aliens Ate My Buick
-Astronauts and Heretics
-The Gate to the Mind's Eye
-'Forty' Live (Limited Edition)


Christopher Franke:
(soundtracks to Babylon 5 episodes)
-Chrysalis
-The Fall of Night
-Severed Dreams
-The Face of the Enemy
-Endgame
-Objects at Rest
-Sleeping in Light


The Full Monty Soundtrack


The Forrest Gump Soundtrack


Bob Geldof:
-Loudmouth (the very best of, with the Boomtown Rats)


The Grosse Point Blank


Jimi Hendrix:
-Experience Hendrix (the very best of)


Don Henley:
-The End of Innocence


Philip Jeays:
-October
-Cupid is a Drunkard
-The Ballad of Ruben Garcia
-Fame


The Kinks:
-The Ultimate Collection


Kit and the Widow:
-Les Enfants du Parody


Led Zeppelin:
-Led Zeppelin
-2
-3
-4
-Physical Graffiti
-Remasters


Tom Lehrer
-The Remains of Tom Lehrer (complete studio and live recordings)


Don McLean
-American Pie


Jimmy Page and Robert Plant:
-Walking into Clarksdale


Pink Floyd:
-1967: The First 3 Singles
-The Piper at the Gates of Dawn
-Ummagumma
-Relics
-Meddle
-Obscured by Clouds
-The Dark Side of the Moon
-Wish You Were Here
-Animals
-The Wall
-The Final Cut
-A Momentary Lapse of Reason
-The Delicate Sound of Thunder
-The Division Bell
-Pulse


The Proclaimers:
-Sunshine on Leith


Queen:
-Queen
-A Night at the Opera
-Sheer Heart Attack
-Live Killers
-A Kind of Magic
-Live at Wembley '86
-Greatest Hits
-Greatest Hits II


REM:
-Eponymous
-Murmur
-Green
-Out of Time
-Automatic for the People
-Monster
-New Adventures in Hi-Fi
-Up
-Reveal
-Around the Sun


The Royal Tennenbaums Soundtrack


Paul Simon:
-Graceland


The Trigger Happy TV Soundtrack


The Velvet Underground
-The Velvet Underground and Nico


The Verve:
-Urban Hymns


Barry White:
-The Collection


The Who:
-Live at Leed's
-Who's Next


Brian Wilson:
-Smile



Spoken Word:


Douglas Adams:
-The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (all five 'phases')


Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennett:
-The Complete Beyond the Fringe


Barry Cryer and Graham Garden:
-Hamish and Dougal, volumes 1 and 2


I'm Sorry I haven't a Clue:
-Volumes 1-8
-Anniversary Special
-Christmas Special


C.S. Lewis:
-The Chronicles of Narnia (Abridged, read by Sir Michael Horden)


Mark Steel:
-The Mark Steel Lectures (volumes 1 and 2)


The Now Show
-Volume 1


One final note, none of my vinyl is listed in any of my posts in this thead (with one exception). There are two reasons, first that I currently, shamefully, don't have vinyl in my system, the second being that most of it was inherited anyway, and as such it has never quite attained the same prominence in my library. When I have the space to bring my record deck out of storage though....

regards, Tam

Tam,

Some very interesting stuff here. Revealing your record collection in public, really is like baring your soul.

Out of interest, did you type this all out long hand, or cleverly lift it from your PC/Mac library?

I would happily post mine if I could figure out an easy way of doing it. Obviously the vinyl stuff would take a lot longer to do, as apart from about 2/3 of my 7" singles, none of the rest has been catalogued.

Regards

Nic

Dear pe-zulu,

It is a fair point you made about my CDs mainly centering in the Viennese Classics, and also the main choices of recordings being fairly heavily weighted towards the middle decades of the twentieth century!

Firstly, this represents 98 per cent of my CDs, and I am still kicking myself over the odd strange ommision! It does not cover my listening at all in general, which takes in many live concerts and relays on the Radio, but in truth the chosen repertoire shows the areas, which I have found the greatest satisfaction in exploring, and really studying. In a lifetime one might know all of Bach really well. Certainly I don't think I shall ever exhausts the areas I know well enough to find myself drifting outwards by a large margin.

I find that the degree of enjoyment that comes from it is rather proportional to the effort put into detailed study. And if I just want a relaxed listen, this study and a certain familiarity means that enjoyment comes easily enough, without trying too hard at that instant moment.

The excitement of a concert is quite different, and I find it is enjoyable in a special way. And there are sometimes wonderful discoveries. I played in Hindemith's Nobelissima Visione once and would love to find a good recording, whilst I mostly don't enjoy his work very much.

As always I am working on new things, and feel the next step with Bach's harpsichord works is to get a harpsichord! I will never be any good, but I bet I shall find much more in it than even now, once I try to play some of it!

Secondly, I actually am not particularly fond of many of the early performances I knew as a cild, and almost everything in the list is at least my second or third move in the repertoire. Of course that is a bit of a generaliastion, and in the one instance of the Erioca from Klemperer, which I had as an 11 year old on LP, I then prefered the Furtwangler LP (HMV 1953?), but I now find that those listed are preferable to Furtwangler's studio set, and I often prefer the Klemperer set to the rest! I have never had much time for complete cycles, and apart from Brahms and Schumann Symphonic sets, the only one I own is Schnabel in the Beethoven Piano Sonatas. The reason is economic in this case. I want some more of Solomon's set, and would love to have Annie Fischer's set. But that is for better times!

I do find that I move through favourite repertoire with known, trusted, and loved artists, which I think shows, in some quite unusual choices in some respects, but fascinating ones. I do like to have at least two contrasted versions of the works I love best. Sometimes the contrast I find most interesting is between two performances by the same artist! In the Baroque field, I definately enjoy the contrast between HIP style performances and something less modern.

I am struggling with the direction the HIP movement is going. I had hoped to see a new generation of artists taking on from Norrington et al, of a higher calibre (IMO of course), perhaps setting similar standards to Grumiaux, or Leonhardt or Walcha. There are cases, such as Rachel Podger on the Baroque Violin, [and Pierre Hantaii, though his most recent recordings stike me as rather mannered and less fine than his earlier ones]but I remain to be convinced about Andrew Manze for example, and he is the more famous than Rachel Podger!

In other fields, I don't prefer Haitink to Boult, of Rattle to Klemperer, or Bruno Walter, and this seems typical of a slight unease I feel with much that has been done in the studio over the recent past. I can see no value in a recording that is only had because it is modern. In fact there was a time when the weight in the library was on slightly newer records, with mono efforts being less than a quarter. I suspect that there are about half of it now!

One serious reason for careful choice is that I simply could not afford all the records I would like, so I buy as many as I can afford, and tend to keep most I get these days. I make fewer mistakes! I have parted with perhaps twice as many as are currently in the list! These fall into two categories. The ones I did not like or fell out with over time, and the ones I adored and thus gave away with a view to converting someone to the cause of the music!

Music is my reason to keep going, and I am grateful that I siezed the chance to get what I have when things were easier. I could never assemble that lot again! I may be half way through a lifetime's study, but rather more than half way along the road to my library at death I would think!

All the best to you, dear pe-zulu! From fredrik

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Adam Meredith,

Dear Friends,

I just posted a nice reply to pe-zulu, and the system informed that I was subject to moderation. What Have I done to deserve that, I wonder?

I really hope it is allowed out as it was a lot of work, and is entirely non-controversial. I hope this works! Maybe the system is trying to tell it does not like me!

Apart from anything else it will be riddled with typos in all probability, so if you do let it through Adam, please will you try to sort it out if you have time, so that it makes sense. Thanks and fingers crossed.

All the best from Fredrik

PS: I think the system must being having a funny five minutes as I still seem to allowed to post: Very strange!

quote:

Originally posted by nicnaim:
Tam,

Some very interesting stuff here. Revealing your record collection in public, really is like baring your soul.

You should see the stuff I didn't post Joking apart, I think that anything that could be construed as embarrassing is probably there.

quote:

Out of interest, did you type this all out long hand, or cleverly lift it from your PC/Mac library?

All laboriously hand-typed I'm afraid. I suspect there may be cleverer ways to do this though. Anyone know of any software that would let you put your discs in to your machine one by one and make up a catalogue (my uncle was recently asking me if such a thing existed). Of course, much of my collection is in iTunes, though I don't know how easy it is to pry it out into a nice readable format.

regards, Tam

Dear pe-zulu,

I posted a reply for you above, which may be interesting!

Fredrik

Dear Friends,

The system picked up a most embarrasing typo. I could never as crude as that turned out to be, even if I was in a mood to! Bless trigger word software!

I would turn the PC off, before doing such a thing, intentionally!

From a fortunately rather less embarrassed than otherwise I might have been, Fredrik!

Now we have to try and guess which work Fredrik mistyped!

On a more serious note, I share some of your concerns about modern recordings and HIP and I avoid Norrington like the plague (though that has a lot to do with the way he kept turning round to look at the audience when he was conducting, rather like a pilot, one felt his attention was more needed elsewhere).

That said, I don't think there is a total bankruptcy in modern recording efforts. As noted elsewhere I like everything Mackerras turns out and it strikes me that some recent projects (such as recording Don Carlos in French) have been worthwhile, even though the Abbado recording didn't quite make my list. I am still waiting for someone to do it right. Some of Rattle's recent discs I have enjoyed very much, especially his Dvorak tone poem and his Schubert 9 (though I suspect Fredrik wouldn't). There do seem to be some good chamber ensembles recording these days (take the Takacs QT or, in my view, anything by the Belcea).

However, when I noticed last weekend that Barenboim is releasing a new recording of Mahler 7, I did wonder whether we really need another. Then again, such new releases, even if they don't add a huge amount to the sum total of human knowledge do probably perform an important function in keeping the classical arts ticking over, which is pretty important.

Fredrik's comments on concerts are very interesting and chime with a thread I've been mulling over in my head for a little while, stay tuned....

regards, Tam

p.s. Fredrik, I know you don't read the Gramophone any more, but this month there is a page on Boult - I haven't read it yet, but if it's at all interesting I shall cut it out and send it to you.

Dear Tam,

Please don't speculate as to what I did!

As for Boult, I would love to read the article. Don't worry about working it up just yet, as I can drop in the record shop, and they may have a coy for sale. It maybe Thread material if it is good!

Fredrik

Fredrik,

It is only one page, so seems silly to buy the whole thing. I rarely reread the articles anyway so I shall send it to you.

regards, Tam

Dear Tam,

Only a page for a whole mag! Well in that case I'll enjoy your precis! Fredrik

quote:

Originally posted by Tam:

Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller, Alan Bennett:
-The Complete Beyond the Fringe


regards, Tam

What no Derek and Clive then? Truely one of the funniest moments must be from "Jump", to probably misquote:

"We haven't laughted so much so Grandma died or Auntie Mabel caught her left tit in the mangle"

Doubly funny at age 15 with an Auntie Mabel.

Jono

quote:

Originally posted by Fredrik_Fiske:
Only a page for a whole mag!

Indeed. He's clearly not as photogenic as one Anna Catrina Antonacci. Mind you, I've not been able to get on with the Gramophone's bizarre editorial decisions since they virtually ignored Mackerras's 80th. Fortunately, Radio 3 did him proud.

regards, Tam