# Do you still have the actual album or recording that got you into classical music?



## prlj (10 mo ago)

For me, it was this very cassette of *The Rite of Spring.*

I wasn't into CM at all, but back around 1986 or so, when I was about 15 years old, I went to the record store and found this huge bin of $1 cassettes. I bought $20 worth, at random, just to fill up this huge empty wall cassette rack that I had.

Over the next few weeks, I'd occasionally put one on while doing homework. I paid no attention to the music whatsoever...it was just background stuff. 

But then one day I put this on, and everything changed. I had never heard anything like it. 

I've held onto this very cassette for the last 35 years, through numerous moves, marriages, careers and kids. It sits with pride on my shelf. I can't remember the last time I actually listened to it, but I know I'll always hang onto it.

Do you still have your first album? Or remember what it was?


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

My first LP record:










Mahler 4 (Concertgebouw Orchestra, Haitink, Alexander)

I still have this standing on my desk in my mancave, next to the laptop.

My first CD (switched quickly to the then new format)










Schubert 8 (ASMF, Marriner)

Like 99.9%+ of my CD's it is still in my collection.


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

I was always interested in classical music, but it wasn't my main passion until I heard a radio recital with Satie's 5th Gnossienne as an encore. It was so interesting that the next day I went to Tower Records and picked this up. That sparked an interest in Satie, which branched out into Webern, Obrecht, and Beethoven, and then everyone else, and now I've ended up with stacks and stacks of CDs squirreled around my house. 

I should have bought golf clubs instead.


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## Montarsolo (5 mo ago)

Yes, have them all; my Sony Walkman (I discovered classical music through the walkman radio), cassettetapes and vinylrecords and cd's.

When I said (as a teenager) I like classical music, I got an old record player and a stack of records in my room. The first record I played made an immense impression. I still have that record (later also bought a better copy without scratches).










With my own money I bought my first two CDs.




















I think this was my third CD. In a Reader's Digest I read an article about Perlman. Then I wanted a CD from him. Still a favorite in the collection.










At age 17 I bought my first opera










In 1997 I became a student and came to a big city. There were several CD shops with only classical music (I bought hundreds and hundreds of CDs there). There I could get the Philips/Decca/DG etc. catalogs for free. I could look in it for hours and hours .I still have these catalogs from 1997.


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## Viardots (Oct 4, 2014)

Montarsolo said:


> Yes, have them all; my Sony Walkman (I discovered classical music through the walkman radio), cassettetapes and vinylrecords.
> 
> When I said (as a teenager) I like classical music, I got an old record player and a stack of records in my room. The first record I played made an immense impression. I still have that record (later also bought a better copy without scratches).


This is a truly outstanding version of Beethoven's 3rd Piano Concerto, with Annie Fischer getting to the core of the music and Fricsay supporting her fully at every point, resulting in a reading that's full of Beethovenian fire, fervour and brilliance in the outer movements and serenity, repose and depth of feeling in the Largo.


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## Chilham (Jun 18, 2020)

Mendelssohn: Piano Trios
Emmanuel Ax, Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

I do. A neighbor gave it to me 61 years ago. The label is "Stereo Fidelity" and featured the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra with a no-name conductor doing selections from Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty. I played that record every day on one of those cheap kid's record players. Every time I go thru the LP pile to get rid of stuff, I always take a fond look at that record knowing that this is where it all started. I'll never play it again; I'm sure the grooves are damaged severely. I have my first two CDs I bought. That was 38 years ago when I got my first CD player and then went to the store to get music: Vaclav Neumann on Denon with the New World Symphony and Maazel with Cleveland doing the Tchaikovsky 6th. (And the cd came from Japan - they misspelled it Cleverland.)


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## Montarsolo (5 mo ago)

Viardots said:


> This is a truly outstanding version of Beethoven's 3rd Piano Concerto, with Annie Fischer getting to the core of the music and Fricsay supporting her fully at every point, resulting in a reading that's full of Beethovenian fire, fervour and brilliance in the outer movements and serenity, repose and depth of feeling in the Largo.


O yes, I agree! And before that I had only heard classical music through a cassette player (1 speaker) or through those 90s earphones on a Walkman. Dragged the record player (Dual 1214), speakers, amplifier and records from the loft. Because I knew Beethoven from the radio, this Beethoven record was the first to put on. The music flowed through the room like I've never heard before. As if a curtain was pulled aside and you entered another planet. At that moment, standing in my little room, I thought: yes this is it.


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## eljr (Aug 8, 2015)

prlj said:


> Do you still have your first album? Or remember what it was?


I sure do










I walked into a little record shop in New Hampshire and asked for something popular in classical. I had never listened to classical previous. I knew nothing about it. I was a junior in college. 1972. This is what he gave me. 
And yes, I still own it.


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## Viardots (Oct 4, 2014)

Bought this on a cassette tape. The music (Sinfonia Concertante K364) was so glorious and full of melodic delights that it kept playing in my mind. Even though the version with Arthur Grumiaux/Arrigo Pelliccia/LSO/Sir Colin Davis later took over the place as my favourite version of the work, one always remembers one's first time.


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

I don't still have the 1969 LP, but I made a CD of it.


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## janwillemvanaalst (5 mo ago)

That was an LP of* Beethoven's violin concerto* op.61, as recorded in 1973 by *Henryk Szeryng* with the Concertgebouw orchestra, conducted by *Bernard Haitink*. I still love that recording. My parents bought it, and I first heard it in 1979, when I was 9 years old.
Sadly, all my LP's were done away with during the move to where I now live, 15 years ago. It's now MP3 all the way...


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## Nate Miller (Oct 24, 2016)

I think for me it was more playing classical guitar that got me hooked. I just love the feel of the nylon strings, I guess. I had to minor in classical performance at music school, so it was really my teachers and the friends I made that instilled the love of classical music in me.

so I was already in love before I started buying records


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

janwillemvanaalst said:


> Sadly, all my LP's were done away with during the move


It was a mercy, to put them out of their misery.


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## RobertJTh (Sep 19, 2021)

This one started it all, it was basically the only classical record in my dad's collection, by-catch from a book club.


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

RobertJTh said:


> ...basically the only classical record in my dad's collection...


Well, if we're including our parents' records, this LP came out the same year I did. I grew up laying in front of a Klipschorn copy belting out the 30Hz notes.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

*Do you still have the actual album or recording that got you into classical music?*



prlj said:


> ... Or remember what it was?



Yes, yes.
And it's a treasure.










It was in a required junior high school class -- Music Appreciation -- where I first heard Tchaikovsky's "Capriccio Italian". And then, only the closing section. It was from one of those 50 great classical moments discs that used to proliferate to expose folks to "classical" music. The class instructor played a couple of selections daily and talked about the composers and music in general. At the time I was pretty much hung up on becoming a rock-n-roll guitar player and AM radio listening fare, top 40, was my regular musical diet. Nothing previous from that compilation disc had made much of an impression till I heard the ending of the "Capriccio." I was never the same. It resonated.

I picked up this (now familiar and even ubiquitous) LP in response to my need to hear the Tchaikovsky again. The "1812 Overture" was a grand bonus. I played the disc on an old, small, low-fi record player, the kind that had two small detachable speakers hinged around the turntable, which opened up out of a suitcase-like package. Still, low fi or not, I was taken.

I not only still have this disc in my collection, I have some dozen or so additional copies, in both vinyl and CD, various pressings and reiterations, as well as other conductors and orchestras playing the Tchaikovsky piece. My classical music experience began with Tchaikovsky, and though it has expanded greatly, it never lost its center.

I treasure this disc and this music today, well over half a century later. 

Somewhere during my later adult life I had opportunity to thank that music instructor for introducing me to this music. I suspect it may have been the only time in his experience that he had such a thank you.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

Montarsolo said:


> There were several CD shops with only classical music (I bought hundreds and hundreds of CDs there). There I could get the Philips/Decca/DG etc. catalogs for free. I could look in it for hours and hours .I still have these catalogs from 1997.


I *loved *the shiny catalogues with all the shiny discs I could not afford..., mostly a few years earlier around 1990 but I didn't keep them.
As for the original question: Not really. I cannot pinpoint a single album and they were not mine but my father's/my parents'. I still have some of these LPs (although I cannot play them now), e.g. Tchaikovsky's 2nd, 5th and 6th symphony etc. from a BMG/Melodiya edition with a bust of the composer on the cover (I am still slightly puzzled by the standard 1812 version because I got to know it in the Soviet version from these LPs) but others I got rid of. 











More important were a bunch of MCs that are also gone or become unplayable: Dvorak's 9th (Järvi or a Russian recording), PIT 1st PC with the 16 yo Sokolov (I got this later on CD for nostalgia), Beethoven's sonatas opp.13/57/27,2 with Youri Boukoff (not bad, I think they were also on a cheapo CD) and a Liszt anthology, mostly Hungarian Rhapsodies. This was ca. 1987. I bought a small number of cheap MCs myself, e.g. Mozart's 40+41 with Klemperer and Beethoven triple/Brahms double with Fricsay. But for Xmas 1988 my brother and I convinced my father to get the family a CD player... I still have the first CD I bought a few weeks before we got the player, Beethoven's pc 3+4 with Ashkenazy/Solti.
I also have a fondness both for the often "serious" cover style of 60s-70s LPs as well as the sometimes more tacky 1980s CDs (with these banners or contrasting corners pointing out the digital technology etc.)


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## RuggiràIntornoATe! (5 mo ago)

*I got into Classical music at a mini concert of Die Zauberflöte when i was four or five years old. Then i discovered Beethoven and the rest is history. Didn't discover Classical music with an album, if i did, i wish it would have been the Wagner Opera set by Solti. *


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## Forster (Apr 22, 2021)

SONNET CLV said:


> *Do you still have the actual album or recording that got you into classical music?*
> 
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Well, there were three pieces that I first encountered as a child (6-7). One was the UK version of the Dorati 1812 on an EP 45rpm...










It was my brother's, as was this version of The Planets Suite....










My parents had this Dvorak...










The first two classical albums I bought were in 1971 (I think...I was 12). The Peer Gynt I no longer have, but the Planets I still own.


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## Waehnen (Oct 31, 2021)

Art Rock said:


> My first LP record:
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Art, that version of the Mahler 4th is the only version I have so far liked and which has actually touched me and made sense! Wonderful that it is your first album.

Of course as a classical pianist kid I had some piano music on record, but my first own purchase was in 1996, Sir Colin Davis, Sibelius symphonies cycle with the Bostoners, Philips. It was a true treasure, of course. I remember listening to the works and little by little getting to understand what was happening. Nevertheless, some symphonies I never understood through that cycle. But the 3rd and the 7th really clicked then.

(Until the age of 17 I had really been a rock and roll kid (despite playing the piano and singing in choirs). From a young age I used to play either keyboards or bass in a band and sing. My first compositions other than on piano were for my grunge band in 1991. It was all Nirvana Nevermind, 70´s Alice Cooper or 70´s Queen rip-offs. It is wonderful that on this forum there truly are people like me who do not have just one musical path and who know that both worlds can coexist.)


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

I bought three Wagner 'bleeding chunk' albums on vinyl many years before I got into classical properly. I decommissioned my turntable nearly 30 years ago and the Wagner albums were either sold or given away. I've bought all my subsequent classical on CD - the first purchase was the 14-disc Solti Ring cycle on Decca from a mail order company who reduced it massively in price as an inducement to join up - this was in the late 1990s. The mail order company is long gone but the Solti Ring remains one of the jewels in my collection.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

That 1997? remastering and beautiful re-packaging of the Solti Ring was probably by then my largests CM purchase. I waited for months until I found it for a good price and took a 45 min train ride (cheap or free for university students) to a larger city to buy it, and it was still around 170 German marks or so, I should remember precisely but I don't...


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## prlj (10 mo ago)

elgar's ghost said:


> I bought three Wagner 'bleeding chunk' albums on vinyl many years before I got into classical properly. I decommissioned my turntable nearly 30 years ago and the Wagner albums were either sold or given away. I've bought all my subsequent classical on CD - the first purchase was the 14-disc Solti Ring cycle on Decca from a mail order company who reduced it massively in price as an inducement to join up - this was in the late 1990s. The mail order company is long gone but the Solti Ring remains one of the jewels in my collection.


I used to have this very set. Stupidly sold it on Ebay a few years ago. I don't even have a CD player at the moment, but I wish I still had this box!


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## prlj (10 mo ago)

Art Rock said:


> My first LP record:
> 
> 
> 
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What an amazing first album!!! Nice!


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## Simon Moon (Oct 10, 2013)

Yep.


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

Waehnen said:


> Art, that version of the Mahler 4th is the only version I have so far liked and which has actually touched me and made sense! Wonderful that it is your first album.





prlj said:


> What an amazing first album!!! Nice!


Can't take the credit for it - I got this as a gift from a friend who was already well into classical music, and had heard from a mutual friend that I was getting interested to start exploring classical music. It was a good start though.


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## sworley (6 mo ago)

It was one of these two, but it's been so long I can't remember which came first for me. (I was a bassoonist.)


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## Chilham (Jun 18, 2020)

Chilham said:


> Mendelssohn: Piano Trios
> Emmanuel Ax, Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman


I suppose that, whilst this tipped me over the edge into serious listening, these below got me into listening to classical music in the first place. I wore out the cassettes and bought the CDs:

































Edit: And yes, I still have them.


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## progmatist (Apr 3, 2021)

I still have the recording which turned me off, and derailed my eventual discovery of classical. I went for the obvious and bought a Mozart Piano Concerto. I was already familiar with more sophisticated music by the likes of Yes, Kansas, and Emerson Lake & Palmer. This Mozart recording sounded cheesy and corny by comparison.


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## RobertJTh (Sep 19, 2021)

These were the first two albums I bought as a kid with my own money.
My dad was with me and he kind of pushed me to get the Karajan New World. I guess he payed for that one too, don't remember. But I very much prefered the Berlioz, and I still do.


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## Francasacchi (7 mo ago)

prlj said:


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I wish I did but my Dad got rid of most of his LPs. If I still had the one he owned and I listened to, it would be the Scherchen St. Matthew Passion set.


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

I can't identify one recording as the first—I was younger than six years old—but I have and still listen to one of the first my mom played for me: Heifitz with the Boston Symphony under Munch playing the Prokofiev G minor Concerto and the Mendelssohn E minor. The others I remember from this age include Musorgsky Night on Bald Mountain, Grieg Peer Gynt suite, Peter and the Wolf, and the Nutcracker Suite. Might be why I identify so strongly with Russian music.


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## Kjetil Heggelund (Jan 4, 2016)

No. It was my fathers and he gave away all his LP's on a flea market several years ago.


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

I'm not being entirely accurate here, as I was first enthralled by The Rite of Spring as played by Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra in Disney's Fantasia at the age of four. (When Fantasia returned to the theaters in 1962, Stokowski's original 1948 performances were retained, thank goodness.) But this vinyl record in my father's collection did a lot to recreate the original power and excitement for me. Of course I still have that LP, which was the mono version, and as a record collecting adult picked up a stereo copy too.


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## NoCoPilot (Nov 9, 2020)

Is it okay for me to chuckle, when somebody's "first record" was a CD from 1996? Cripes, by then I was already forty years into it.


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## Bulldog (Nov 21, 2013)

I can't recall any particular first recording. What really got me into classical was my dad playing his recordings and the times when he would have a few friends over to play some chamber music; they were all amateurs but very good ones.


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## Hogwash (5 mo ago)

I still have the email from Yale University stating I had passed History of CM 101 back in 2020. Taking this online course during the COVID lockdown was what really ignited my passion. That being said I guess the DVDs of Star Wars and Jurass Park are somewhere around the house which represents the earliest CM that I was “into.”


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## fluteman (Dec 7, 2015)

Bulldog said:


> I can't recall any particular first recording. What really got me into classical was my dad playing his recordings and the times when he would have a few friends over to play some chamber music; they were all amateurs but very good ones.


Same here exactly. Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann and Brahms. They would call this "The Repertoire" and nod knowingly at each other as if it was a secret code for Freemasons. My father would tell me what a shame it was that there was no repertoire for the flute, as if music didn't exist before 1775 and after 1890.


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

Mine is this one: a cheap sub brand from Philips


Beethoven pico 5 Magaloff/ Otterloo side 1


Beethoven : Symphomy 5 Markevitch side 2


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## Tristan (Jan 5, 2013)

I got into classical at a very young age and there isn't one single album that did it, though I can think of a few examples:

One of the earliest was a set of opera CDs that included famous arias and choruses, often featuring Pavarotti, but other singers as well. It was by London and called "Pavarotti's Opera Made Easy". I remember one of the CDs was "My Favorite Showstoppers" and another was "Opera for Children". Both I listened to from a very young age and may be the first classical music I can remember hearing. I do still have these. This would've been in the early 2000s. I first went to the symphony around then, at age 5. 

Another was Vox's "25 Favorites" series, in particular a 3-disc set of excerpts from music by Mozart, Beethoven, and an Opera selection as well. I have these as well and my parents later bought me more from this series. This series is really what got me interested in hearing more since it sampled so much music by so many different composers. I still have most of these CDs as well.

And lastly, a cassette tape that I heard at my grandparents' house, a recording of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade and the Russian Easter Overture. I no longer have this and I don't even remember the orchestra, but it was the Russian Easter Overture that really blew me away at age 8. It opened my mind to what classical music could be and changed my perspective on it forever.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

We had an LP from "Pergola" (must also have been a Philips sublabel?) with Michelangelo's Sibyl (I would not have known, just a creepy looking woman with that creepy pattern of cracks, I checked that it is the "Delphic Sibyl" but the colors post restauration are rather different...) on the cover; it was a whole series with paintings of women on the cover. Why they'd pick that picture for Ballet suites, no idea.... There was also a Heliodor highlights of Fricsay's Magic Flute with a Papageno on the cover I also found a bit frightening and when I saw that one track was called "Der Hölle Rache", I'd rather not play it as a child...


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## prlj (10 mo ago)

I just remembered that I also still have my first CD - this Enigma/Naxos sampler disc from 1987. I may have to give this a spin...


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## Scherzi Cat (8 mo ago)

Yes! After I saw the movie "Amadeus" I acquired this CD that sent me on a journey that never ends. Thank you "Wolfie" and Sir Neville Marriner for enriching me life.


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## Scherzi Cat (8 mo ago)

Viardots said:


> Bought this on a cassette tape. The music (Sinfonia Concertante K364) was so glorious and full of melodic delights that it kept playing in my mind. Even though the version with Arthur Grumiaux/Arrigo Pelliccia/LSO/Sir Colin Davis later took over the place as my favourite version of the work, one always remembers one's first time.


I had this one also. Still do. It was among the first half dozen CDs that I acquired. K364 became my all time favorite work by my all time favorite composer.


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

My first two CD'S .


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## Animal the Drummer (Nov 14, 2015)

I was a keen classical listener some time before I bought my first LPs - that's why I bought them actually! - but I do still have the first two, Dennis Brain playing the Mozart horn concertos (I play the CD nowadays but can't bear to part with the record) and Moura Lympany playing the Chopin waltzes, some of which to my delight my piano teacher set for this year's summer holiday assignment (B minor, C sharp minor, A minor). I play the Lipatti CD of those now but again can't imagine letting the LP go.


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

My first classical vinyl was the Herbie 63 Beethoven symphony cycle box set. Got this with some old classic rock vinyl I bought from a guy selling off his vinyl for cannabis, at the end of the 70s/start of 80s. I used to think I paid £2 for this set but when I spoke to an old friend who was with me that day (and bought a stack of vinyl from him too) he told me that he threw it in for nothing as we'd bought so much from him and he wanted shut of it. Unlike some of the other vinyl I bought from him , the vinyl was near mint even if the box was a little battered. I ended up selling it on Ebay about 10 years ago and made quite a profit on it. Had it twice on cd since (both times I paid less than £3 for the set).


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## Bastien (Sep 21, 2012)

NoCoPilot said:


> I don't still have the 1969 LP, but I made a CD of it.


Wow! Not what got me started in classical but I did the same thing with this recording. When I sold my LPs, I acquired a remastered CD version from "Pristine Classical". Great performance! It doesn't show above but the pianist was Abba Bogin.
What got me started in classical was Swan Lake with Ernest Ansermet on London. I do have a CD version.


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## Marlowe (May 12, 2021)

Mine was also a cassette of the Rite. In 1983, fresh to music camp, a friend recommended the piece. After hearing it in the music library, I decided I had to have it and blindly purchased a version on budget cassette (later that same friend advised me to stick to buying the CBS newspaper headline 'Great Performances' versions to insure decent interpretations). I played the hell out of that cassette and so the Goossens version became my imprinted version. No one seems to like that version but, even after hearing plenty of other versions, I still think it ain't too shabby.

Since then, after becoming a huge classical fan and getting a degree in music, the Rite remains my single favorite classical piece.


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## Wigmar (8 mo ago)

prlj said:


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It was a DG digital recording, recorded c 1983, with two Mozart piano concerti, nos. 21 & 23, performed by London Symphony Orchestra under Claudio Abbado, soloist Rudolf Serkin (DG 2532095).
As a matter of fact, this record has almost not been played, as I later began to listen to Kempff and Brendel. 
This album is still in my collection, almost fourty years after the purchase.


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## Laraine Anne Barker (8 mo ago)

prlj said:


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NoCoPilot said:


> I don't still have the 1969 LP, but I made a CD of it.





Tristan said:


> I got into classical at a very young age and there isn't one single album that did it, though I can think of a few examples:
> 
> One of the earliest was a set of opera CDs that included famous arias and choruses, often featuring Pavarotti, but other singers as well. It was by London and called "Pavarotti's Opera Made Easy". I remember one of the CDs was "My Favorite Showstoppers" and another was "Opera for Children". Both I listened to from a very young age and may be the first classical music I can remember hearing. I do still have these. This would've been in the early 2000s. I first went to the symphony around then, at age 5.
> 
> ...


I was about 17 and fast losing interest in the pops, which were starting to go downhill into mere noise in the early sixties anyway. I was floundering around looking for something else (I've always needed music in my life) when my mother and oldest sister bought a radiogram between them—mono, not stereo. Mum needed some LPs to play on it and seemed to be choosing randomly at the sales. She came home with Sir John Barbirolli conducting the Hallé Orchestra in Swan Lake Suite and one if the L'Arlésienne Suites. I'm sure it mean no more to her than it did to her daughters, but it ended with me not wanting to play anything else. That didn't mean I suddenly started enjoying Classical music. I had to play every LP I bought at least half a dozen times before it made sense and there was no help around as there is now, so I joined WRC and bought some very unsuitable music for a beginner. Landowska playing Bach fugues for instance, followed by The Musical Offering (Menuhin). I'm surprised I didn't land up hating Bach. My middle sister joined me and years later I was surprised at the difference in our tastes. I landed up with a passion for chamber music and very little interest in the big orchestral sounds of the 19th century, which remained my sister's preference—especially Brahms and Dvorak. I don't have that original 10-inch LP, of course. After all, it wasn't mine to take when I left home to get married. I also sold my LPs on TradeMe some years ago. I didn't want them landing at the dump after I died. They didn't deserve that. BTW, does anyone here realise the big record labels obviously saw the likes of WRC as a threat because Decca started its Ace of Clubs budget label with the specific intention of getting rid of record clubs. It had quite the opposite effect, of course. Certainly WRC did very well, though eventually it fell into the hands of people with no interest in music and dollar signs in their eyes and started selling mostly pop stuff, forcing me to resign my membership. That meant I had to buy LPs at retail price, and there was only one retailer in Auckland: Marbecks, who now charge so much for CDs it is cheaper for me to buy from the other side of the world, the UK.


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## Dirge (Apr 10, 2012)

As an innocent young lad, I was tricked—_tricked, I say!_—into listening to classical music by that rascal Robin Hood, whose tales of adventure are insidiously accompanied by the music of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto on the Tale Spinners for Children album *Robin hood* …






Tale Spinners for Children is a series of albums on the United Artists label that combine classic tales with classical music. *Robin hood* was the first album in the series and was recorded around about 1959. It features Robert Hardy as Robin Hood and The Famous Theatre Company with the Hollywood Studio Orchestra.


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## znapschatz (Feb 28, 2016)

When I was about 12 years old, my family bought a bunch of 78 rpm records at a music store when 33/rpm records was the new standard of recordings and the old 78s were being sold off at a huge discount. One summer evening, I was home alone, bored and and looking for something to do when I remembered the 78s. I looked through them and selected out the Prokofiev 5th Symphony, which I had never heard before. After listening through the first side, I was hooked. Then and there, I was a classical junkee, just like that.


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## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

Yes. One of those old Readers Digest box sets I pestered my parents to get when I was about 13. I still have it but I haven't had a turntable in over a decade.


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## DTut (Jan 2, 2011)

prlj said:


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## Ulalume!Ulalume! (6 mo ago)

'twere this here album








As a student, nearby my school existed a little second-hand record store whose "just in" CD section I'd check every Friday afternoon. This led me to pick up a lot of unfamiliar music on a whim, most of it bad. At this time I couldn't pick out a Bach track from a Beethoven one, I was unfamiliar with the different periods and styles and types of composition and even the sound of the different instruments beyond the very obvious, but I knew the name _Bach_, I liked the sound of the words _harpsichord concertos_, and most importantly I liked the artwork, so I bought it. I loved it from first listen but for whatever reason I didn't have the compulsion to explore further until years later, at which time familiarity with the name _Hogwood_ and the Éditions de l'Oiseau-Lyre artwork style served me in good stead.


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## fbjim (Mar 8, 2021)

Yabetz said:


> Yes. One of those old Readers Digest box sets I pestered my parents to get when I was about 13. I still have it but I haven't had a turntable in over a decade.


Those are commonly found at thrift stores and really are excellent. They were commissioned by Readers Digest but recorded by RCA with quality orchestras, so the sound is great. 

They had an important proto-HIP Beethoven cycle (Leibowitz) too, and a lot of great French music recorded with Paris.


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## Yabetz (Sep 6, 2021)

fbjim said:


> Those are commonly found at thrift stores and really are excellent. They were commissioned by Readers Digest but recorded by RCA with quality orchestras, so the sound is great.
> 
> They had an important proto-HIP Beethoven cycle (Leibowitz) too, and a lot of great French music recorded with Paris.


Yeah this one was a smorgasbord of different composers and it had some really good performers. Man, I wore those records out. The Bach disc had that fine Leibowitz transcription of the Bach Passacaglia and Fugue and the Chopin one had a lot of Earl Wild.


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## SanAntone (May 10, 2020)

I remember two things:

1. Hearing the piano roll recording of *Gershwin* playing _Rhapsody in Blue_ from outside my sister's bedroom when I was probably about 10 or 11. I was fascinated by the music and still am. I do have a CD of those piano rolls, but not the LP my sister owned. She may still have it.

2. At about the same time my mother shopped at a super market which gave away gifts if she bought enough groceries. One day after her shopping she brought home a green box with gold lettering and three LPs inside described as "the greatest music ever written" or something like that. I remember listening to *Rimsky-Korsakov*'s _Scheherazade_ and thinking it was the greatest music I had heard. But my interest in that work has wained.

As a consequence of these two experiences I became interested in classical music and decided I wanted to become a composer, and ended up going to music school and getting a degree in music theory and composition.


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## Laraine Anne Barker (8 mo ago)

Ulalume!Ulalume! said:


> 'twere this here album
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Hogwood is gone, and alas so is Harnoncourt. It was the latter who introduced me to the period instrument movement. I think it was a concert recorded from the Auckland Town Hall and my memory is that they were playing Rameau, though I can't remember what the music was. It was the sounds of the woodwinds that attracted my attention and that was when I learned why they were called woodwinds, despite modern ones no longer being made of wood, something that had puzzled me. A lot of people sneered at the period instrument movement, but these days modern-instrument musicians ignore it at their peril. Like you, I couldn't tell Bach from Beethoven at the start. It was all just sounds to me. I obviously had non-existent listening skills, which doesn't say a lot for the pops of the fifties on which I was brought up. These days I can follow anything. I remember when my husband bought the album Oxygene. We listened to it together and I was surprised when he said he liked only one track. To me it was "much of a muchness": if you liked one track you'd like all the rest. I have to admit to being glad he forgot it.


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## Floeddie (8 mo ago)

Yes, here's my 1st purchase:

I ripped this to mp3 a few decades ago, but I'm sure it still plays. I have a decent Sony turntable that has a quirk in it's operating chip, so I rarely use it anymore.


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## RobertJTh (Sep 19, 2021)

Rogerx said:


> Mine is this one: a cheap sub brand from Philips
> Beethoven pico 5 Magaloff/ Otterloo side 1
> Beethoven : Symphomy 5 Markevitch side 2


That's one well-filled vinyl disk!
36 minutes on side 1, 31 on side 2 (did he skip all the repeats?), how did they manage that?
Reminds me of the longest LP I owned, Klemperer's Bruckner 4, which miraculously fitted on a single EMI disk.


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## prlj (10 mo ago)

I think one takeaway from this thread it that, in order to inspire a new generation of CM fans, we need to get CM records back into grocery stores... ☺


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## Laraine Anne Barker (8 mo ago)

prlj said:


> I think one takeaway from this thread it that, in order to inspire a new generation of CM fans, we need to get CM records back into grocery stores... ☺


That's never happened in New Zealand. If they did stock CDs, you can be sure they would all be pop, After WRC was taken over by profit-driven managers I went to a retailer whose staff knew exactly what you were asking for (Marbecks). I don't go there any more for the simple reason I can get what I want a lot cheaper from the other side of the world (at PrestoMusic. based at Royal Leamington Spa), They also sell jazz, sheet music, books on music and musical instruments and they send out a weekly newsletter with reviews of CDs that wouldn't look amiss in Gramophone magazine. I used to buy second-hand CDs but when Ardern forced overseas retailers to add GST (grab snatch take we call it) most overseas second-hand retailers refused to sell to New Zealand or made their prices too high to make it worthwhile.


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## Vasks (Dec 9, 2013)

Yes I still have this LP that I bought some 50+ years ago


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## Bkeske (Feb 27, 2019)

Wish I did. It was a Peter and The Wolf LP I played over and over again a a wee tike in the early 60’s….on the family console stereo. Fascinated me.


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## geralmar (Feb 15, 2013)

Obviously not classical; but I still have the album more than six decades later and it got me into classical by making me want to find more music like it. The result of my pre-teen quest (and logic) was purchase of the next L.P., long gone-- but my first actual classical purchase (67 cents off the bargain rack).


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## Montarsolo (5 mo ago)

Kreisler jr said:


> We had an LP from "Pergola" (must also have been a Philips sublabel?) with Michelangelo's Sibyl (I would not have known, just a creepy looking woman with that creepy pattern of cracks, I checked that it is the "Delphic Sibyl" but the colors post restauration are rather different...) on the cover; it was a whole series with paintings of women on the cover. Why they'd pick that picture for Ballet suites, no idea.... There was also a Heliodor highlights of Fricsay's Magic Flute with a Papageno on the cover I also found a bit frightening and when I saw that one track was called "Der Hölle Rache", I'd rather not play it as a child...


There were also a few from this series in my collection! Later I found out that most of the records I had were budget releases. That's what this series was about. Records were just so expensive back then. Such budget expenditures were often more than half cheaper (26 vs 10 guilders).


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## Laraine Anne Barker (8 mo ago)

geralmar said:


> Obviously not classical; but I still have the album more than six decades later and it got me into classical by making me want to find more music like it. The result of my pre-teen quest (and logic) was purchase of the next L.P., long gone-- but my first actual classical purchase (67 cents off the bargain rack).


It's nice to know others came to classical music in a similar way to myself, though my introduction was an accident. I'm sure the music (Swan Lake Suite and one of the L'Arlésienne Suites) meant no more to the buyer (my mother) than it did to her daughters. I always say it was the best present my mother ever gave me—or that I gave myself, because I had to do quite a lot of work to improve my abominably bad listening skills.


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## 89Koechel (Nov 25, 2017)

Many, great choices, here ... so many! ... I don't have a photo of either album cover, but one of the best was RCA Victrola ... VIC-1027 ... Pierre Monteux and the Paris Conservatoire, and Boston SO, et. al., in Debussy's "Nocturnes" (complete) and Stravinsky's "Firebird Suite". ... One that is probably forgotten is Seraphim 60117 ... the late, great Emanuel Feuermann (cello) with Gerald Moore and Dame Myra Hess, in Beethoven & Schubert (the latter, the "Arpeggione Sonata").


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## Sid James (Feb 7, 2009)

Among the earliest recordings I got where the CBS "greatest hits" series. These often had short pieces, movements and sometimes complete works, each volume being devoted to a particular composer. These where good compilations: the performers included the likes of Bernstein, Ormandy and Szell, and the liner notes where well written. I also acquired recordings of complete works from the mainstream repertoire.

The first CD I got was Takako Nishizaki playing Bach's violin concertos on Naxos. Having culled the collection a few times since, I don't have the actual disc, but I did repurchase it some years ago. The cover has changed, but the music is the same.


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## rspader (May 14, 2014)

I do. I bought this one on the day before I bought my first CD player in 1985:


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## znapschatz (Feb 28, 2016)

No, all our classic music recordings are gone, and I don't know where. Fortunately, I played the hell out of them while they were still with us, but since then, I have moved on. I have that particular piece in 33 rpm, so I haven't really missed out, and when I'm in the mood, it fits.


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