What are you listening two?

[tony]

I like this a lot any classical buff aware if this recording is available on CD? Mrs Garanca for me is always a pleasant listen.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5U9gIr5aIyU

[Diapason]

Can't find a recording, Tony...

[mcq]

You may want to try this Jessye Norman version, Tony:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-mKWCZIohF0

The original CD, Sacred Songs, is out of print but is available here as an (expensive) CD-R:

https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/p ... cred-songs

[tony]

Thanks Simon I posted this twice in error! Thanks Paul had a listen to that very nice.

Picking both your brains and any other classical enthusiast I came across this set and larger one with I think 55 CD's! For a luddite who is not interested in spending 20yrs figuring out the ones to buy are these specials the ones to consider? The £100 for 55 CD's of stuff across the ages that appears from reviews to be all top notch recordings seems a bargain.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/111-Years-Deut ... FKARXVP112

[Diapason]

The box you have attached looks pretty good, but these days 27 quid for 6 CDs is OUTRAGEOUSLY expensive :-)

What's the 55 disc box you're looking at? To be honest, as long as they're not mainly historical recordings (which enthusiasts sometimes love but are generally not for me, and generally not for the casual listener looking for good sounds) I think most of these boxes are excellent value. In each case, there'll be discs in there that I paid full price for over the years and it's quite jarring to see that as 1 disc in 55 for buttons. You can get into arguments about "better" performances of some of the works, but who cares?! If you particularly like some of the music then feel free to hunt out other options in the future, but for now I think 55 CDs should keep you going for a while.

[tony]

The link for the 55 CD's was below the 6 CD one. Here it is. Yes Simon I am of the view of just getting well recorded ones I have enough bootlegs of bands I like that are of poor quality and certainly not in that space with regards to Classical

https://www.amazon.co.uk/111-Years-Deut ... 2W78SS87HZ

[mcq]

I would look seriously at the contents of any box before purchasing, Tony. Many of these big boxes are very wide-ranging and may cover material that does not currently interest you (for example, Renaissance choral music and 20th century music and opera and art-song is not universally popular). The last thing you want to do is invest in a big box that gathers dust on a shelf. If I were you, I would try to focus my interest towards something specific, such as symphonies or piano/violin concertos or solo piano or chamber music, and narrow this down to a particular period such as the 19th or 18th century. Try to sample as much online as possible. You may end up buying individual CDs instead.

The 6-CD box from DG does look attractive. The performances are excellent, as you expect from a prestigious label like DG, but it is very wide-ranging and, to me, it looks very “bitty” in that you have small selections of larger works which may or may not bother you. The contents are listed here, by the way:

https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/p ... grammophon


These are some other boxes which may be of interest to you:

https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/p ... y%20albums

https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/p ... symphonies

https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/p ... recordings

[Diapason]

I'm like Schrödinger's Audiophile here: I simultaneously completely agree with, and completely disagree with, mcq on this one!

My disagreement stems from the fact that somebody approaching this music might not really know what they like. Or even if they do, the chance of being exposed to something completely different that they might turn out to love is one of the joys of a wide-ranging set. If you sat me down to listen to the warhorses of symphonic repertoire I'd probably run out of steam quickly. A lot of that is my own taste, but I'd sooner have the Kellogg's multi-pack even if I don't like coco-pops.

But mcq is also right in everything he posted. The boxes can indeed be bitty. You might discover you don't fancy 70% of it.

[mcq]

I do think the most important thing is to have patience, Simon, and to try to listen without prejudice. When I was listening for the first time to classical (and jazz) in my teenage years, I found it difficult and foreboding initially. (Perhaps because I started with 20th century composers like Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Berg, Ligeti, Xenakis, and Webern and gradually worked my way backwards.) It is a different sound world from popular music and it does demand an extension of one’s attention span. It is impossible, though, to recommend a single point of entry because of how we all respond to different types of music. But it is important to be patient and curious and never to blindly dismiss.

[tony]

Thanks lads your responses are what I was hoping for. I am probably half way in both camps. I flip around every now and then and try out some of the stuff accumulated over the years from various sources (say no more) If the Dresden stuff was all of the Garanca performance I linked that would be nice but Paul's point is well made. The bloody hassle of trying to locate the bits you like would be torture. Of course with CA and SD you can pick out what you like and make a good play list. Will keep kicking tyres for the moment or I could say I will be Simon :)