I got fed up of Planet Rock due to that 'wanna be Rock Star ’ DJ Darren going on about his gigs, bass playing and dressing the part so that he ‘owned’ the stage. It all became a bit tedious. I’m a convert to Classical in the car now, far less stressful. 
OK, I was miles out - I was going to predict Radio 4, whose Today programme I can usually stand for about four minutes before I need to go back to the welcoming blanket of Radio 3.
Mark
It is my impression that on this forum, many who listen to classical music choose classical recordings, some many years old. For me, more modern recordings are much more desirable. The tempi are faster, many are recorded using contemporaneous instruments particularly the fortepiano, the recording quality is better and it is easier to hear individual instruments. The whole effect is much brighter and livelier and uses to the full the clarity offered by modern Hi Fi and Hi-Res recordings.
Moving from CD player to Streamer and Qobus has allowed me to listen, at no cost, to new releases and compare these with older recordings. For some the difference is quite remarkable. The challenge of course is to reproduce ‘live music’ at home like the extraordinary chamber recital by the Takacs quartet I went to yesterday.
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While sound quality is a significant element when I choose a recording, it is not as important as the artist. And many of my favorite artists recorded decades ago. This is especially true for conductors. If I had to pick two who had the most influence on me, they would be George Szell and Otto Klemperer with Bruno Walter a close third. Maybe that’s in part because I’ve been listening to them for about 50 years, but it’s also true that their recordings have a greater impact on me.
I couldn’t disagree with you more. The great musicians that were around when I was growing up (think of conductors such as Erich and Carlos Kleiber, von Karajan, Szell, Reiner, Jochum, Kubelik, Klemperer, Abbado, Muti, Harnoncourt, Giulini, Solti, pianists such as Gilels, Richter, Brendel, Pollini, Lupu, Perahia, Barenboim, Curzon, violinists such as Grumiaux, Heifetz, Oistrakh, Schneiderhahn, Chung, Menuhin, Mutter and so on and so on).
Most of the musicians that I’ve named above are gone, and they are not being replaced by artists of similar stature.
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I knew I was putting my head above the parapet by making that post, but for me, I find modern interpretations refreshing and invigorating. Having spent 50 years listening to all those you mention, I feel I need a change.
Fair enough.
I can’t find the modern artists to compare with those from the past that I have mentioned above. I may be looking in the wrong place.
I enjoyed your post and I tend to agree with you. I do find the to-me inflated reverence for musicians of a certain era, over modern ones, yet another example of looking at the world through gold-tinted spectacles, often worn on the back of the head. Something similar seems to happen in threads on other genres and I suspect it’s another characteristic of what can be seen as something of an old geezers’ forum. (And I count myself as one!)
Sure there are some wonderful performances from the past. Janet Baker singing Purcell’s Dido, Jacqueline du Pré playing the Elgar cello concerto, Vaughan Williams conducting his 4th symphony, Mravinsky whipping the Leningrad PO into a demonic fury in Tchaikovsky’s symphonies are all incomparable treasures. But there have been several superb recent recordings, too. I find modern historically-informed performances of baroque music mostly much more involving than the often romanticised readings of earlier generations. For a cappella choral music, modern professional choirs such as The Sixteen and Tenebrae are as good as any I’ve heard from the past.
You’re right about recording quality, too. Chandos’s series of recordings with John Wilson conducting the English Sinfonia is outstanding. So are most of Hyperion’s recent issues.
I enjoy many past recordings, made and purchased when I was a lot younger, but I also love listening to recent performances both recordings and live in the concert hall. And I agree that Qobuz is a wonderful resource for exploring new recordings. But do try some Hyperion recordings, too.
Roger
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Absolutely Peakman. You cannot only listen to old recordings and ignore modern ones. You cannot only listen to modern recordings and ignore old ones.
As you said, Mravinsky’s Tchai 4-6 is indispensable, for instance. So is Pollini’s recording of Beethoven’s late sonatas (early 70’s versions).
But, as an example, Beethoven’s Violin Concerto by the lovely Lisa Batiashvili really was an ear opener for me 
I never appreciated the work till I heard her recording.
There are staggering old recordings that just can’t be ignored. And staggering recent ones too. That’s what makes our hobby so wonderful.
Conclusion. We must listen without prejudice.
And yes, I’m a Naimite who loves great sound too.
Thank you all for getting back to me. The first thing to say is that I have completely gone off huge symphonic music and my listening is of the more intimate sort and centred around the Baroque, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. Bohm, Karajan and the BPO have been completely replaced by musicians like the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, Kristian Bezedenhuout, the Chiaroscuro quartet and Jordi Savall.
The reason I made my post is because newcomers to classical music like Pete, that initiated this string of posts, may be encouraged to listen more to classical music if offered the newer, livelier, offerings out there.
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Or they may not.
The recordings of Carlos Kleiber will be sought out in 2122, long after the likes of Bezeidenhout and the Chiaroscuro Quartet have been forgotten.
Not that I expect to be around to see if my prediction proves true.
(I wonder what the LP12 will look like in 2122. Any guesses?)
To what extent are you referring to HIP playing style style as opposed to the sound quality of the recording itself?
For me historically informed performances open up the sound and create a better balance of instruments. The modern concert grand in particular can be too dominant in small groups and its sustained sound too ‘muddy’. I am not sure HIP creates a big change in playing style except in tempo.
Maybe I am a musical philistine, but I do like music to be a little rough around the edges, however, almost everything I select for repeated listening has had a strong seal of approval from the critics that write for ‘Gramophone’.
This morning, for a bit of fun, I streamed some older recordings of Beethoven’s 5th via Qobus. I found Klemperer too slow and the sound too poor for me to enjoy. I was surprised that Karajan’s 1970s version was remarkably brisk. Kleiber’s 1975 recording was of course brilliant. I do prefer the sound of the more modern recordings I have but the performance that Kleiber gets from the Vienna Phil suited me perfectly. He certainly skipped along as briskly as some of the more recent versions.
You may just want to consider Klemperer for a little bit longer.
When Walter Legge founded The Philharmonia just after World War II, he recruited players from all over the place. Many of the wind players, for example, came from what had been the RAF Band during the War. Anyway, he picked out - with remarkable foresight, you might think - Herbert von Karajan and Otto Klemperer as ‘his’ orchestra’s first two conductors. Karajan had been recently de-Nazified, which some questioned at the time, as he (like Elisabeth Schwarzkopf) had been an ardent Nazi during the War. (Schwarzkopf had been the mistress of some German Provincial Governor of an occupied territory, but she managed somehow to wriggle out of that inconvenience.)
Anyway, among the very first recordings made for Columbia were mono recordings of Beethoven’s Third, Fifth and Seventh Symphonies under Klemperer. They are utterly fantastic performances, all caught on the wing before Klemperer had the first of a series of strokes which turned him into a marmoreal presence on the podium.
The recordings didn’t last long in the catalogue, and were ‘replaced’ by new recordings which formed part of Klemperer’s complete Beethoven Symphony cycle released on the HMV or EMI labels.
Those three Beethoven Symphonies were amongst the very first releases on what was the new Testament CD label - independent from HMV/EMI, but releasing only CDs from the EMI/HMV back catalogue which the EMI were not interested in releasing themselves.
Very interestingly, some technical genius at Testament discovered that EMI had had two separately miked tape recorders running for some of the Klemperer Beethoven recording sessions (so that they could cut two separate mono lacquers for pressing LPs). And that, by playing the two tapes simultaneously through two separate reproduction systems, they were able to produce ‘accidental’ stereo recordings which the original engineers at the time had had no idea that they were doing!
That’s all rather complicated (and may sound like a plot line for an episode of ‘Doctor Who’). But it is real. I have the Testament CDs at home. No doubt they were deleted from the catalogue long ago.
But I think that it’s a great story (for a classical music nut).
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Fascinating story. I have a number of Klemperer LPs but they have been relegated to the attic as I have gone over completely to digital.
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