What are you listening to?

[Jose Echenique]

Sinfully decadent. This recording was made with DECCA equipment and technicians for EMI. I believe this is the only time this has happened.
I only saw Hildegard Behrens live once, in Paris, a couple of years after this recording was made.
She was magnificent.

[fergus]

I have actually never heard Salome in its entirity....I presume that you would recommend this particular recording Pepe?
That is also interesting about the Decca equipment being used for EMI.

[Jose Echenique]

I have actually never heard Salome in its entirity....I presume that you would recommend this particular recording Pepe?
That is also interesting about the Decca equipment being used for EMI.

I like this recording very much Fergus. Nilsson may have an even bigger and more imposing voice than Behrens, but Behrens is certainly sexier, more seductive. I´d say that Nilsson was more an Elektra than a Salomé.
Karajan also has a better John the Baptist in José van Dam, and the invaluable support of the Vienna Philharmonic. Yes, a very desirable recording indeed.

[markof]

[bombasticDarren]

Schubert - Symphony No.8 Unfinished (Leonard Bernstein, Concertgebouw Orchestra, Deutsche Grammophon)

[Jose Echenique]

The invaluable RICERCAR series of German Baroque Cantatas. Several volumes were dedicated to the great Danish composer Dietrich Buxtehude because he worked in Lübeck of course.
How wonderful is to see the names of luminaries like James Bowman and Max van Egmond, but most specially of a little known Dutch soprano who should have had a bigger career because she was utterly extraordinary: Greta De Reyghere.

[DaveF]

[bombasticDarren]

Schubert - Symphony No.5 (Leonard Bernstein, Concertgebouw Orchestra, Deutsche Grammophon)

[DaveF]

[mcq]

Lux Aeterna is an extraordinary piece of music, and stands out in my mind as one of the pivotal pieces for unaccompanied choir composed in the last century - along with Martin's Mass for Double Choir, Poulenc's Mass in G and Stockhausen's Stimmung. There is a real sense of intellectual enquiry in his collected work. The works of the more commercially successful Arvo Part seem insubstantial when set beside the music of this master.