In the early 1980’s, I was a budding classical music audiophile who lived on a graduate student income. Winnipeg had a number of good record stores for classical music albums, and I wanted to make sure that I got the best albums for my measly disposable income. I was able to do that with a handy dandy guide courtesy of MPR and Mr. Bill Parker with Building a Classical Music Library. It was very helpful identifying good recordings and performers.
I hadn’t thought about this book for quite a while until Thursday night, when Husband brought it up out of the basement as we were trying to figure out what was so important about our vinyl recording from 1981 of Vladimir Ashkenazy’s piano version of Pictures at an Exhibition. Paging through the book, I realized how many treasured recordings we have that Mr Parker suggested.
One favorite recording from that period of my life is that of Percy Grainger playing Grieg’s A minor Piano Concerto. Grainger was long dead by the time of the recording. He made piano rolls of the concerto in the 1920’s, and a piano set up to play the rolls was recorded with the Sydney Symphony. Here is the same set up with Andrew Davis conducting at the London Proms in 1988.
What are some of your treasured recordings?
