So, there's definitely different kinds of classical music - a lot of it really can be fairly abstruse or dull. But the great stuff is pretty great, and I think often accessible too. For instance, Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique really makes the most sense understood as a concept album.
As Ubertrout mentioned above, the Auryn’s recordings are definitely worth checking out. And for starters...along with the Beethoven symphonies, some other wonderful TACET’s recordings are:
This is a controversial topic. Some have argued the conductor role is totally overblown (most famously: The Maestro Myth), and it is true that the role of the conductor for a first-rate orchestra is really different from a provincial/amateur/school orchestra or chorus, where keeping time is much more important. But the conductor still has an important role in terms of shaping and envisioning the piece. He's the director, much the same way the director of the film isn't necessarily doing any technical part of the filming.
My introduction to classical music, beyond what I would have heard in films, adverts, and so on, was Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture back in the early '90s. I was nineteen or twenty at the time and was immersed in Floyd, Beatles, Bowie, Hendrix and great stuff like that, but the guy who had turned me on to all these artists had a few classical cassette tapes as well and gave me 1812 Overture to try. I dug it straight away and next I found myself listening to Mendelsohn's Violin Concerto in Em.
Nothing much followed for a few years till a girl I was going out with turned me on to Bach's Brandenburg Concertos and then I met a guy who was studying classical guitar at university and he turned me onto Shostakovich 5 - one of my favourite symphonies ever - as well as Steve Reich. At which point the door to classical music was open once again.
Then came the old sa-cd.net site and along with the old crew, I started exploring music on a practically wholesale scale - Brett and Ralph were already down the rabbit hole and I quickly followed. It was through such exploration that I discovered Mahler and now I simply cannot imagine life without his music. His 2nd and 3rd symphonies are simply the best imo. While Urlicht (which means something akin to Primordial Light) is the absolute pinnacle of every note ever written - again, imo. What follows isn't the best version by any stretch of the imagination, but it's pretty decent all the same.
And that brings me up and my classical music interest pretty much up-to-date. I've got a small collection that stretches across quite a few genres and eras. From Bach to Beethoven and from Reich to Tomita. A lot of classical music does nothing for me. I mean, I can live with a lot of what I hear. But I'm only interested in collecting what I love to hear - a helpful strategy, perhaps, seeing as symphonies are long - some are really, really long - and life is short
To put it mildly, Derek, VERY CONCISE. And if you recall, I was SA~CD.net's 'bad boy' always injecting popular music and jazz into an equation purposely re~directed by moderator Zeus towards what HE liked........Classical.
And since, like Surround Music, Classical music remains a VERY niche market [8~10% of the population], unless you're a musicologist or classical musician,
a lot of the classical repertoire can be monotonous and tedious and even numbing. But then again, there's a lot of popular music which can have the same adverse effect.
To educate a newbie, like GOS as to what he should dip his toes into would be a very difficult proposition but a GREAT start would be to literally gobble up those discrete classical QUAD SACDs which Dutton Epoch has released in the past few years. Most of them are of a more accessible nature, melodious and beautifully recorded and I would also suggest almost anything by musical impressionists Debussy and Ravel and even Fauré and Schumann for a beginner potpourri of magnificent compositions and Stravinsky for the more musically adventuresome and of course your beloved Mahler for his incomparable symphonies and all those TACET Beethoven MOVING SURROUND SACDs for 4 corner immersion. And lest we forgot those fabulous Brits: Ralph Vaughan Williams and Edward Elgar.
Unfortunately and I've already chimed in on THIS topic: Most Classical SACDs and even DVD~A discs are content with offering ambience in the rears which do turn almost ALL QQer's OFF. After all, why did I invest in an elaborate surround system to hear an echo of the fronts in the rears, and with ATMOS, overhead and that same criticism spills over into poorly remixed popular fare.
For that my friends is why I personally am a HUGE advocate of Blu Ray and UHD 4K movies where your system will almost NEVER disappoint you in the IMMERSION department...unless you're into sappy love stories or those oldie but goody B&W movies from a bygone era.
As for Steve Reich's COME OUT ~ BAD HAGGIS, Derek!
Yeah, the old site was classical-centered until you came along lol, which no doubt irked Zeus so much it led to the site's closure. And yeah, D-V and a few other labels have done wonders with classical music in recent years from a QQ perspective, but dynamically-discrete surround mixes remain niche as you say in the grand scheme of things.
It's a great time for anyone wanting to explore classical music - or any type of music - as all the music you could ever hear is available online, just a quick search away.
And Come Out bad haggis? Each to their own
Any or all of the above DG recordings could eventually be released in surround on Blu-ray, SA-CD or maybe even some online surround format, but whether or not that happens is almost totally driven by profitability projections. It is unfortunate, but that is the business model that has enabled DG to survive and even seemingly thrive when most of its competitors from the "golden age of classical music recording" (see http://quadraphonic.info/Thomas_Mowrey/2-Mowrey_Roch_Speech.pdf) have shriveled, been swallowed up or disappeared altogether.
The market has clearly changed (something an industry vet like you obviously knows), but in a weird way it's become an opportunity. Increasingly the industry is looking to find profit wherever it can, and disc replication costs are at an all-time low. And Universal Music (especially DG) has discovered that buyers will pay a premium for box sets that include a Blu-ray disc of the set material in high-resolution. And they've done a few forays into multichannel recently as well - they've released the Bernstein and Karajan 70s Beethoven symphony cycles into Dolby Atmos (although it's mostly just quad with some summed channels as I recall), and they also issued the Solti recording of Tannhauser in 5.1 sourced from the quad mix: Wagner: Tannhäuser (Solti, 1971) 5.1 Blu-ray Audio from Decca Quad Tapes
I think manufacturing a single Blu-ray is much cheaper, and frankly there's an advantage in not needing to switch discs. Also, most aren't multichannel.
The question is why do they release with BDs and CDs instead of one or the other. I have no use for the CDs.
