What are you listening to?

[Seán]

There are too many of them at the expense of some neglected Handel works - the point Jared was making I think...
I am by no means a lover of Handel, but, even so, I have 3 Messiah's (C. Davis/Pinnock/McCreesh)

Christophers, Pinnock & McCreesh for me...

it is interesting Darren how over the course of time, our tastes within the classical sphere are to a certain extent, diverging in different directions...

Do you want to know how obsessive/compulsive I am?
Here are some of the Messiahs I own:

1.Thomas Beecham.
2.Malcolm Sargent.
3.Adrian Boult.
4.Colin Davis 1.
5.Neville Marriner 1 (his Argo recording, infinitely better to the Philips remake).
6.Raymond Leppard (treasurable for his exemplary quartet: Felicity Palmer, Helen Watts, Ryland Davies and John Shirley-Quirk).
7.Christopher Hogwood.
8.John Eliot Gardiner.
9.Nikolaus Harnoncourt 1 (TELDEC).
10.Ton Koopman (ERATO).
11.Trevor Pinnock.
12.William Christie.
13.John Butt & Dunedin Consort.
14.Ivars Taurins & Tafelmusik.
15.Gabieli Consort /McCreesh.
16.René Jacobs.
17.Nikolaus Harnoncourt II (DHM).
18.The Sixteen/Christophers.
19.Richard Hickox.
20.Georg Solti (Odd, I know, but the soloists are good).
21.Frieder Bernius (surprisingly good version).

And I am not counting 3 or 4 in the Mozart orchestration.

Well done Pepe, that is a very impressive list.

[Jared]

^^ I think he must have a bigger house than I have, to store them all!!

[bombasticDarren]

Haydn - Symphony No.15 & No.16 (Roy Goodman, The Hanover Band, Hyperion)

[Jose Echenique]

^^ I think he must have a bigger house than I have, to store them all!!

That is already a big problem for me Jared. I have to confess that I have long filled every bookshelf available at home both with books and cds, so all new purchases have to go to cardboard boxes (I must have 40 or 50 of them full of cds).
You may wonder how I listen to my cds. What I do is burn those recordings I know I´ll want to hear often before I put away the originals. I also digitalized them and keep them in external drives as security copies and also because it´s much easier to locate a disc, and then burn it.
I have 6, 1 and 2 Terabytes drives full of the most marvelous sounds the World has known, and that´s maybe only half of my collection.
It is also useful to have some burned copies at hand since often friends and family (now my 25 year old nephew is becoming a fan fast) want to hear something and I can "save" the original from leaving home. Complicated perhaps, but you know, with cds being deleted so fast and often reaching sky high prices in the second hand market, you´d better take good care of your collection.

[Jared]

Complicated perhaps, but you know, with cds being deleted so fast and often reaching sky high prices in the second hand market, you´d better take good care of your collection.

Thanks for the interesting insight, Pepe... my CD collection is only small, but over the past couple of years, it has become for me, the most important material possession I own... and now, I've even got it insured!

[Jose Echenique]

<Thanks for the interesting insight, Pepe... my CD collection is only small, but over the past couple of years, it has become for me, the most important material possession I own... and now, I've even got it insured!>

It just HAS to be the most precious material possession for all of us, I think...and my father gave me a beautiful Patek Philippe watch! But I wouldn´t exchange that for my Gottingen Festival Handel operas, now deleted and almost impossible to replace!

[Jared]

first listen to this set...

[Jared]

Beethoven
Egmont (Nov 1939)
Leonore No.3 (June 1945)
Symph No.3 (Oct 1939)
Toscanini/ NBC Symphony
RCA Victor

[Seán]

<Thanks for the interesting insight, Pepe... my CD collection is only small, but over the past couple of years, it has become for me, the most important material possession I own... and now, I've even got it insured!>

It just HAS to be the most precious material possession for all of us, I think...and my father gave me a beautiful Patek Philippe watch! But I wouldn´t exchange that for my Gottingen Festival Handel operas, now deleted and almost impossible to replace!

God yes!

[Jose Echenique]

Today I played one of those extremely rare and hard to get recordings that I treasure: Donizetti´s La Favorite in the original French. It´s a live recording from the Donizetti Bergamo Festival issued on the Ricordi label. It is so rare that I couldn´t find a single cover picture, so you see tenor Luca Canonici. This tenor had a truly lovely voice, but suffered paralyzing stage fright that prevented him from having the huge international career that he deserved. Some of you may remember him as the tenor in Gardiner´s glorious Verdi Requiem.