# Worst classical music recordings of all time?



## radiodurans (Dec 8, 2018)

We often talk about our favourite recording here, are there any classical music recordings you absolutely hate, or perhaps some that are so bad they are good?


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

Oh dear, a red meat arena


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Record producers have to keep the bottom line in mind and can't afford to release really bad recordings. Not that there haven't been any, but they are few in number.

But I do have a couple of doozies. The first is Charles Munch's last recording of the Symphony Fantastique made in Hungary. In the last movement the tubular bells player gets lost - miscounts badly and is soon floundering to get on track. If you know the work well, or have ever played that part (I have), it's funny as hell. You feel sorry for the guy who realized this recording will be out there for the whole world to hear forever.

Then there's the single most atrocious singing imaginable of Furtwangler songs on an early Marco Polo disk. The singer, one Guido Pakal, has no sense of intonation, no feel for rhythm and the most unpleasant nasal sound I've heard on record. Just awful. Still, I keep it and play it for singers.

Then there's the worst CD I ever bought. The most wretched music - 20th c academic serialism at its worst. It's the Arthur Schnable Symphony no. 2. Someone actually hired the Royal Philharmonic to record it. It's utterly dreadful. But it stays on the shelf as a reminder that however great a pianist Schnabel may have been, a composer he was not.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

Koch recording #3-7017-2H1:

Selections:
Svindov:_Oratorio Pathetique
Shostakovich: Execution of Stepan Razin _

Artists:
Assen Vasslev, Bass
Andrei Andreev, Conductor
Varna Philharmonic Chorus & Orchestra

Albany recording #Troy 452

Selections:
Menotti: _The Unicorn, the Gorgon & the Manticore_
Gottlieb: _Presidential Suite_
Murray: _A Medieval Bestiary_

Artists:
Timothy Koch: Conductor
Carolina Chamber Chorale

Albany recording #Troy 221-22

Selection:
Maslanka: _Mass_

Artists:
Gregg Hanson: Conductor
University of Arizona Symphonic Choir & Wind Orchestra

All of the above performances suck.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

My pick.

















Is violinist Gringolts trying to hide behind his instrument out of shame for delivering such poor performances? Perhaps he should take up double bass. He could hide behind it more effectively.


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

just by their covers, you can tell there's something wrong with them:


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

However, those 3 are all pretty main-stream conductors and performances ...

Like in these cases:


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## Nereffid (Feb 6, 2013)

Anything by [insert name of someone's favourite musician].


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## Eclectic Al (Apr 23, 2020)

Nereffid said:


> Anything by [insert name of someone's favourite musician].


That would be Glenn Gould then. Cue indignation. :devil:


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## fbjim (Mar 8, 2021)

yeah i like jazz, have you heard this one


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

hammeredklavier said:


> just by their covers, you can tell there's something wrong with them:


But there's nothing wrong with any of them! The covers may be shocking, but heck, that's why I bought them when they came out. Tristan is a fine orchestral romp through the opera. The Planets may not be the best of Boult's recordings, but it's excellent all the same. The Ring was the first one I ever had. Despite the almost farcical story about how it was finally put together, Swarowsky was a pretty good Wagner conductor as it turns out and all in all it's a decent Ring and frankly more entertaining than some later ones with big-name labels, conductors, and singers. I wish I had kept that LP set.


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## fbjim (Mar 8, 2021)

Westminster Gold was basically a reissues/eastern import mid-budget label a la Brilliant Classics nowadays, I think. They had some excellent stuff past their "interesting" cover designs. 

You'd have to go to stuff like LaserLight for the really crappy recordings.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

I suppose Maximianno Cobra's Beethoven cycle needs to be mentioned here. Or has it gotten to the point that it shouldn't be mentioned anywhere at all?


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## Azol (Jan 25, 2015)

I believe OP has asked about worst recordings, not performances, as great performance might be awfully recorded and vice versa.
I'll nominate any recording with heavily compressed dynamics and/or loud ones (see Loudness wars). Early digital recordings can sound quite terrible as well.
And we don't talk bootlegs here where quality usually takes the backseat to the rarity of the event (think Callas' Armida here).


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

One of the few CD's I culled is Maher's 9th by Levine. Very shrill violins. Maybe a victim of early digital recording.


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## fbjim (Mar 8, 2021)

Manxfeeder said:


> I suppose Maximianno Cobra's Beethoven cycle needs to be mentioned here. Or has it gotten to the point that it shouldn't be mentioned anywhere at all?


Aren't some of these actually made with MIDI-arranged orchestral samples at this point?


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

A recording of Bruckner's 5th helmed by Rozhdestvensky on the Russian Revelation label still brings me out in a rash, and that's just thinking about it. I don't think the performance could have been more unhinged had the entire orchestra been blind drunk - perhaps they were. Maybe in an anti-universe this performance is the daddy of them all.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

One of the worst recordings I ever heard was of Bach's Goldberg Variations performed by Les Violons du Roy under the direction of Bernard Labadie. Some of the pieces display a consort style while the reminder has "Hollywood Bowl" written all over them. This pathetic mess of a recording was originally issued on the Dorian label but has been transferred to Atma Classique to insure it will be with us indefinitely.


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

hammeredklavier said:


> just by their covers, you can tell there's something wrong with them:


That "Planets" was pretty bad, for sure...iirc, the trumpets in "Jupiter" cracked more notes than they hit...almost funny....
The VSOO Mahler 5 with Scherchen was another stinker- it was a great party record way back when...good for some laughs - I finally ditched it - last seen imitating a Frisbee over the great Gorge at Letchworth State Park, NY!!
The Leinsdork/Boston Mahler 5 was a real loser, as well...I remember tuning in to the radio one night, returning from a gig...I tuned into the middle of Mahler 5...it sounded like some regional orchestra having a bad day....then the bright, blaring, nannygoat trumpet entered - and it was obviously Roger Voisin, featured on the leinsdorf-loser...


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## Eclectic Al (Apr 23, 2020)

elgars ghost said:


> A recording of Bruckner's 5th helmed by Rozhdestvensky on the Russian Revelation label still brings me out in a rash, and that's just thinking about it. I don't think the performance could have been more unhinged had the entire orchestra been blind drunk - perhaps they were. Maybe in an anti-universe this performance is the daddy of them all.


Rozhdestvensky did a deeply rubbish Rite of Spring with the LSO on Nimbus. You can like this piece or not like it, but it shouldn't be dull.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

fbjim said:


> Aren't some of these actually made with MIDI-arranged orchestral samples at this point?


I think the 9th was with real musicians and the rest was sampled.


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## GraemeG (Jun 30, 2009)

I heard the great Australian educator Richard Gill once remark that Jean-Francois Paillard had "his own special place in hell for what he's done to Baroque music."
Lebrecht's last book on the recording industry finished by listed his 100 most notable recordings of all time, followed by a list of "20 recordings that should never have been made" for one reason or another; lamentable combination of performers, cynical disinterest of participants, contractual obligations, etc.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

I don't think Paillard changed anything, since he worked and belonged to the tradition that was mostly before any HIP.

I agree that he can be boring and lifeless, but it's certainly not always the case, and he did a lot to promote by then rather unknown, French baroque composers; his late Delalande symphonies are among the most festive, compared to the dullness of say Reyne's much more recent recording.

Gill seems to have been a HIP advocate (I haven't heard of him before this, so I can't be sure of that judgment):
https://www.limelightmagazine.com.au/features/richard-gill-why-its-hip-nowadays-to-be-h-i-p/

In general, HIP has provided quiet a lot of, let's say debatable or dubious entries in the field of recordings, besides the good ones.


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## Animal the Drummer (Nov 14, 2015)

Heck148 said:


> That "Planets" was pretty bad, for sure...iirc, the trumpets in "Jupiter" cracked more notes than they hit...almost funny....
> The VSOO Mahler 5 with Scherchen was another stinker- it was a great party record way back when...good for some laughs - I finally ditched it - last seen imitating a Frisbee over the great Gorge at Letchworth State Park, NY!!
> The Leinsdork/Boston Mahler 5 was a real loser, as well...I remember tuning in to the radio one night, returning from a gig...I tuned into the middle of Mahler 5...it sounded like some regional orchestra having a bad day....then the bright, blaring, nannygoat trumpet entered - and it was obviously Roger Voisin, featured on the leinsdorf-loser...


Have a gold star for that "Leinsdork".


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## MatthewWeflen (Jan 24, 2019)

Ask for Cobra, get Cobra:


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## Axter (Jan 15, 2020)

^
That was unbearable. As a Beethovenian I felt tortured. OMG what was that, specially the 5th?
!!!


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

MatthewWeflen said:


> Ask for Cobra, get Cobra:











I would rather get this


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

MatthewWeflen said:


> Ask for Cobra, get Cobra:


Gawd, that is awful....what would possess someone to do that??


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

MatthewWeflen said:


> Ask for Cobra, get Cobra:
> ...





Axter said:


> ^
> That was unbearable. As a Beethovenian I felt tortured. OMG what was that, specially the 5th?
> !!!





Heck148 said:


> Gawd, that is awful....what would possess someone to do that??


Actually ... if you purchase the vinyl record, a 33 1/3 "long play" recording, and then play it at the 45 rpm speed, the music is not so bad.

However, if you play it as recorded, its sting is actually worse than that of the critter posted by hammeredklavier:



hammeredklavier said:


> I would rather get this


Meanwhile, if you're ever on death row, and you have one last request, and you have a hankering to hear Beethoven's Fifth one last time, you might want to choose this one to stall for time.

On the other hand, it just might kill you faster!


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

By the way, I'm thinking ... if Maximianno Cobra has any intentions of conducting the Wagner _Ring _cycle, I suggest he start immediately. Life's short.


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## arpeggio (Oct 4, 2012)

If a recording is good and the performance is bad, the recording still stinks.


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

arpeggio said:


> If a recording is good and the performance is bad, the recording still stinks.


Agreed...a lousy performance in great sound is still lousy...


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## 13hm13 (Oct 31, 2016)

If the subject of this thread is "RECORDING" _per se_, and not PERFORMANCE .... or, said another way, engineering ... then I'd give my top honors to Deutsche Grammophon ( roughly from the early 1970s to mid 1990s). For all their $$ and resources, DG's SONICS (generally, but not absolutely) were inferior to many other labels including communist block labels like Eterna (VEB Deutsche Schallplatten of East Germany). I can't put my finger on why many of their recordings (in that time period) sucked ... some say maybe some was due to "early digital" ... but minor players like Telarc and Denon has superb "early digital".

Deutsche Grammophon ( roughly from the early 1970s to mid 1990s) ... many, many great artists and fine performances ...marred by sucky, lifeless engineering management.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Some people say that it's because the recordings were designed for mass-produced, very mediocre sound systems and preferences of the day, and not hi-fi orientated.


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## Nawdry (Dec 27, 2020)

mbhaub said:


> But there's nothing wrong with any of them! The covers may be shocking, but heck, that's why I bought them when they came out. Tristan is a fine orchestral romp through the opera. The Planets may not be the best of Boult's recordings, but it's excellent all the same. The Ring was the first one I ever had. Despite the almost farcical story about how it was finally put together, Swarowsky was a pretty good Wagner conductor as it turns out and all in all it's a decent Ring and frankly more entertaining than some later ones with big-name labels, conductors, and singers. I wish I had kept that LP set.


What's wrong would seem to be the cover designers' obsessive fetish with a certain part of the female anatomy. The marketing department at the time must have been excessively worried that the music of Wagner and Holst alone would not be sufficient to lure an adequate proportion of the classical LP-buying (and presumably mostly male) public ...


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

Azol said:


> I believe OP has asked about worst recordings, not performances, as great performance might be awfully recorded and vice versa.
> I'll nominate any recording with heavily compressed dynamics and/or loud ones (see Loudness wars). Early digital recordings can sound quite terrible as well.
> And we don't talk bootlegs here where quality usually takes the backseat to the rarity of the event (think Callas' Armida here).


When I'm driving, the road noise precludes listening to anything with a wide dynamic range.

I think someone should come up with a series of brickwalled Classical recordings for travelling.


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## Dimboukas (Oct 12, 2011)

Please, just listen to it, just the first seconds.


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

Dimboukas said:


> Please, just listen to it, just the first seconds.


After 20 seconds, he got to measure 3!! good gawd, awful...why would anybody release such a travesty??


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## fbjim (Mar 8, 2021)

Max Cobra is cheating. Didn't he "record" some later releases with a synthesized orchestra?


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## 59540 (May 16, 2021)

Heck148 said:


> After 20 seconds, he got to measure 3!! good gawd, awful...why would anybody release such a travesty??


I don't know, but if I were an orchestra member and a conductor tried to foist this on me, I think I'd have to walk out. How long is the entire recording? About 4 hours?


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## JackRance (Sep 13, 2021)

Cobra is terrible!


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## JackRance (Sep 13, 2021)

In any case, I hate almost all the Barenboim recordings...


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## JackRance (Sep 13, 2021)

Stokowski's Rite of Spring
Gould's Mozart Sonatas


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## 59540 (May 16, 2021)

^ I'd vote for the Stokowski Bach transcriptions. Some of those are pretty bad imo.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

JackRance said:


> Cobra is terrible!


IMO, that should more or less be the final word.


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## Kivimees (Feb 16, 2013)

Soviet-era Melodiya LPs for the domestic market.

How LPs were manhandled by store staff made the problem worse.


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## fbjim (Mar 8, 2021)

JackRance said:


> Stokowski's Rite of Spring
> Gould's Mozart Sonatas


Gould doing Beethoven is even worse. My first listen to the Hammerklavier was Gould. Whoops.

(his moonlight is actually very good)


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

dissident said:


> I don't know, but if I were an orchestra member and a conductor tried to foist this on me, I think I'd have to walk out. How long is the entire recording? About 4 hours?


You could walk out for an hour's lunch break, come back and you'd only have missed 8 measures!! :lol::lol:


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## superhorn (Mar 23, 2010)

I've heard so many DG recordings , digital and analogue , with superlative sound . 
To name only one example, the stunning complete Ravel Dapnhis & Chloe with Boulez and the Berlin Philharmonic .


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## 59540 (May 16, 2021)

Heck148 said:


> You could walk out for an hour's lunch break, come back and you'd only have missed 8 measures!! :lol::lol:


I looked at that YT channel and MAAAAN he sure likes to take things slooooooooow :lol:


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## Kiki (Aug 15, 2018)

Come on people, shouldn't we appreciate Mr. Cobra's unrelenting search for _his_ truth? :devil:

By the way, just out of curiosity, I configured Youtube to play at 2X speed, and it became a lot more agreeable. In fact, looking at the timings, it would become just a few minutes faster than most HIP performances, and for those who dislike _fast_, 1.5X or 1.75X could do nicely.

Oh, Youtube can also be configured to slow it down to as much as 0.25X. I wonder if anyone would feel curious enough to try that.


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## pianozach (May 21, 2018)

Kiki said:


> Come on people, shouldn't we appreciate Mr. Cobra's unrelenting search for _his_ truth? :devil:
> 
> By the way, just out of curiosity, I configured Youtube to play at 2X speed, and it became a lot more agreeable. In fact, looking at the timings, it would become just a few minutes faster than most HIP performances, and for those who dislike _fast_, 1.5X or 1.75X could do nicely.
> 
> Oh, Youtube can also be configured to slow it down to as much as 0.25X. I wonder if anyone would feel curious enough to try that.


I'm perplexed that the Cobra recording of the 9th was given a release at all. It's a curiosity, and at that speed there's not likely to be any wrong notes played, but _really?_


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

pianozach said:


> _I'm perplexed that the Cobra recording of the 9th was given a release at all._


Didn't he stump up the money himself? I thought the label it was released on was his own imprint or something.


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## 59540 (May 16, 2021)

pianozach said:


> I'm perplexed that the Cobra recording of the 9th was given a release at all. It's a curiosity, and at that speed there's not likely to be any wrong notes played, but _really?_


I can sense Wim Winters in there somewhere.


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## CnC Bartok (Jun 5, 2017)

Otto Klemperer doing Mahler's Seventh.

Mogadon man.


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

pianozach said:


> I'm perplexed that the Cobra recording of the 9th was given a release at all. It's a curiosity, and at that speed there's not likely to be any wrong notes played, but _really?_


Isn't there a law or something?? regarding intentional destruction of art works?? Vandalism??
lol!!


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## John Zito (Sep 11, 2021)

This live recording from the 90s of Richter playing the Gershwin concerto should not have been released:


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## Dmitriyevich (Dec 3, 2021)

My worst classical music experience ever. Wagner and Tchaikovsky without vibrato.


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## 59540 (May 16, 2021)

John Zito said:


> This live recording from the 90s of Richter playing the Gershwin concerto should not have been released:


One thing about Richter though is he seemed to be willing to give just about anything a go.


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## Kiki (Aug 15, 2018)

CnC Bartok said:


> Otto Klemperer doing Mahler's Seventh.
> 
> Mogadon man.


LOL. I wonder if any drug researchers have looked into the effectiveness of using the Klemperer M7 as an alternative prescription to sleeping pills/tranquillizer, but I also can't help wondering if serious annoyance attacks could be triggered in some patients.


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## Waehnen (Oct 31, 2021)

I must admit it is unfair for the two great pianists to post their live performances as the worst records I possess.

But the quality of the Argerich record is just so bad I cannot understand why this was published in the first place. And the Brahms sonata by Fischer with all the wrong notes undermines what a great pianist she was at her best.

We would have managed without both recordings.


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## Phil loves classical (Feb 8, 2017)

CnC Bartok said:


> Otto Klemperer doing Mahler's Seventh.
> 
> Mogadon man.





Kiki said:


> LOL. I wonder if any drug researchers have looked into the effectiveness of using the Klemperer M7 as an alternative prescription to sleeping pills/tranquillizer, but I also can't help wondering if serious annoyance attacks could be triggered in some patients.


Klemperer's Mahler 7th is my favourite Mahler recording.


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## progmatist (Apr 3, 2021)

I have a vinyl record of American patriotic music, pressed in the Netherlands. Instead of having a side 2, the flip side is identical to side 1. Despite what the track listing on the jacket would suggest.


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