# (Going on a) collector's diet



## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

Oh, why not? I've been debating starting this thread for a long time. Since I need to start weeding out my collections again, I thought I'd help myself out by keeping track of the decisions I'm making as I make them.

Be prepared to see Books, DVDs, Videos, CDs and artwork that a) remain in my collection; b) get pieced for anthologies to save space; c) are removed permanently. 

You will also see similar items borrowed from the library and whether or not they go on the list for possible purchase later.

Finally, you will see items seen in magazines that capture my interest and what I propose to do about them.

And, since no thread is private, feel free to 1) comment on my stupidity; 2) commend me for my genius; 3) make your own lists.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Hah. I may _comment_ from time to time.


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## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

Borrowed from the library last week:







This one I loved - promptly ordered it on-line. Should be arriving soon. Very bright and distinct polyphonic treatments of some of Machaut's most accessible music.







I also loved this one. But, since I had ordered the above, I decided to keep this on my list for the future. Different combinations of voices and instruments give this disc a bit more variety than the above.







Renaissance instrumental and vocal tracks alternating with spoken word (French) telling the story of Tristan. An interesting concept, but not one that I would necessarily want to listen to repeatedly.







I would have liked to have listened to this disc more than once, but I had to return it before I could. Machaut's pieces given a contemporary African, Brazilian or Latin reworking. I couldn't really make out the Machaut originals in most of these in just one listening, but, as I say, I think I'll try this one again in the future.


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## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

EXISTING COLLECTION









*Made the cut*

I first learned about the music of Aldebert from the song "Carpe Diem" that was included on a Putumayo CD I have. I ended up buying his first three solo albums, of which the above-pictured is his first.

This CD shows a bit more of the harder rock background he had before deciding to go solo, and is a bit less caberet than the next two. But, it's pretty infectious nonetheless, with a substantial amount of violin and accordion music to go with the more typical (in an Anglo-American sense) rock instrumentation. Albebert is the first French singer I've encountered who speaks what I would call "attack-French" rather than the smooth kind.

I'm at a disadvantage with this music since I understand hardly any French at all and there are no available translations of these lyrics. I have read a translation of "Carpe Diem" from his third CD and it's amazingly clever lyrically, so I imagine I'm missing out on a lot.

On the other hand, maybe it's better not to know.....


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## regressivetransphobe (May 16, 2011)

Oh lord, I read the title wrong at first.


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## Tero (Jun 2, 2012)

I've been selling or trading the rejects. It makes a lot of shelf space: You trade 10 CDs in mint condition for 1 ina wrapper. If they want your 10. You might need to take 20 for them to pick out 10.


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## samurai (Apr 22, 2011)

Tero said:


> I've been selling or trading the rejects. It makes a lot of shelf space: You trade 10 CDs in mint condition for 1 ina wrapper. If they want your 10. You might need to take 20 for them to pick out 10.


@ Tero, Are you referring to the trade in program on *Amazon?*


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## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

Belated thanks to the moderator for allow me to change the title of this thread (thus avoiding untold future embarrassment).









One of my longest-owned Putumayo discs, and a definite keeper. JP Natal's McCartneyish song, "Mon Ami d'en Haut" and Constance Amiot's "Clash Dans Le Tempo" are the highlights for me. Since there are two tracks (including one by Carla Bruni) that I don't care for as much, I decided to make an edited copy of this disc and "spindle" the original. Definition: *"spindle" 1) to store a CD on a spindle for space-saving purposes.*


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## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

Now, this one has me in a quandary. I love this disc. I have all 5 Alfven symphonies on Naxos. They are each coupled with other pieces of orchestral music by Alfven, some of which are even better than the symphonies. (This one and the one with Sym #3 are my favorites. "Summer Rain" from "The Mountain King" suite on the above disc is especially beautiful music in a mystical sort of way.)

However, there's one Alfven piece not on the Naxos discs that I have read rave reviews about. To get a recording of that piece, I either have to buy a pricey CHANDOS single CD, or I could get the 5 disc BIS set from Jarvi that has everything else I already have and don't need, but which I can actually get for less than the one CHANDOS disc.

And, if I get the BIS set, which Amazon reviewers assure me is better than the Naxos set, what do I do with the Naxos discs?

I hate the waste....

In the end, I can't say yet if this disc will remain in my collection or not.


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## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

Problem solved. I can buy the Gustav II Adolf suite for 99 cents from I-Tunes.

I'm a genius.


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## Tero (Jun 2, 2012)

samurai said:


> @ Tero, Are you referring to the trade in program on *Amazon?*


No it's our only classical store run by 3 old farts. I've sold them cds and found them still there 5 years later.


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## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

Second Aldebert CD. This one is a bit more cabaret than the first, but there's great variety in styles and it's still a very interesting CD to listen to. I really need to get someone to translate the French lyrics because I have no idea what the songs are about except for the tiny little images that accompany each song's lyrics in the booklet.

Anyway, another keeper. If I ever get a translation, I may end up spindling it, but until then it stays unedited.


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## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

Another disc that makes the collection. Alfven's "The Prodigal Son" is a suite of seven pieces from the ballet of that name. This is very accessible music, including at least one track that could be classified as a Swedish "bon-bon". Overall - a take it or leave it item for me.

The Second Symphony, on the other hand, is a definite keeper. If my attention started to wander a bit in the very long slow movement (over 18 minutes on this disc), it was more than revived in the fourth (Preludia) and fifth (Fuga) that end the work. RIght from the opening notes of the first movement you can tell that this is going to be a much bigger affair than the First Symphony, and for the most part, it lives up to its intentions.


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## Sonata (Aug 7, 2010)

Most of your collection has survived the ax so far!!!

I'm going on a "collection diet" of sorts myself. Not really weeding anything out (other than individual songs or pieces off of my iPod and iPad). But I am being strict about not purchasing/renting any new music for a couple of months until I really get to know the 50 or so albums I've acquired in the last year!!


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## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

Sonata said:


> Most of your collection has survived the ax so far!!!


So, you've noticed that? 

This may end up being as hard as a *real* diet!


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I did something like this with books once - gave away hundreds of them...

But now that I have my own house, I will never do anything like it again. The only CDs I might ever even consider culling from the collection are things I got in high school because I was stupid (please Hammer don't hurt me) and things my wife got because

I'd better not speculate. (One is Celine Dion's _D'eux_. I don't know, my French pronunciation sucks, but I know that "x" is silent. So.... No, really, I'd better not speculate.)

But I guess if I ever desperately need cash, I'll get on Amazon and try to unload them for $499.99 each. I'd like to believe the used CDs at those prices are the result of typos by a drunk clerk at Powell's or something. At the very least, some overworked guy in India having a joke at our expense. But I'd also like to believe that no one would buy a used CD for that kind of price when the MP3s cost $7. That's what I'd like to believe. No doubt someone out there right now is dancing around his mom's basement playing air guitar hero because he just sold _Dare to be Stupid_ for forty bucks to some unfortunate sweet old lady who was thinking in Guyanese dollars. Watch out, classical music collectors of Guyana, if I'm ever desperately broke.

Otherwise with luck two hundred years from now when I die my great-great-great-great grandkids will be going through my house saying things like, "What _are_ these flat round shiny things? Thousands and thousands of them. He must've played some kind of game with them. Weird old coot."

Sorry. Back to your business.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

My poor wife. I tell all kinds of lies. Truth is, _D'eux_ is another album I got in high school. Worst thing she has is Enya's album _Synthesized Pizzicato Strings Ad Nauseum_. I believe in the USA it was released as _A Day Without Brain_, er, _Rain_.

Really, I'd love to compose a song for Enya.

"So here's how this works sweetheart. I'm gonna push this button here on this machine, and it's going to go 'plunk plunk plunk plunk plunk plunk plunk' for five and a half minutes and you're going to sing the word 'Coo' over and over again slowly, and we're gonna layer it all up and tell people it's beautiful medieval poetry about a woman whose lover's dolphin's ghost-crystal has gone across the sea to work on a coffee plantation. They'll love that right up. I'll cash this check and be back around lunch time. You get all that cooing good and done, help yourself to the cigars and whiskey. Tomorrow we're gonna go in a new direction musically. I'm bringing in my friend Mr. Waits."

Ahem. I teach the book of Genesis in the morning.


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## Vesteralen (Jul 14, 2011)

For me, it's a space problem. We downsized a couple of years ago and I just don't have the room to keep as much stuff as I used to. (Though I did manage to hang on to five or six bookcases full of books.)

At least with CDs and LPs, I can envision myself playing most, if not all of them, again given enough time. With DVDs and VHS tapes, it's different. We'll sit there and look at the shelves of them when we want to watch something and end up streaming Netflix or watching something from the DVR instead. It's a lot harder to rewatch a movie than it is to replay a recording for me. So, that makes it a little harder to cull the audio collection. Plus, there's that "completist" thing. I may not enjoy Alfven's Fourth or Fifth Symphony as much as I do the first three, but am I really going to get rid of 4 & 5? I doubt it.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

I'd better get this thing back on topic. I feel a kind of responsibility. In the first place, Versteralen, I'd most eagerly help you get rid of those Naxos Alfvén CDs. You'd never see them again, 'less you visited. 

In the second place, I cold probably cull a bit more than I'm admitting. If I had to... 

- Golijov: Oceana - Maybe I'll like this someday if I hear it enough, but for now, a) why did they rip off a Bill Evans cover, and b) I said "maybe."

- Duruflé, Fauré requiems - someone on Erato or something. I only need one recording of this, and Shaw is the one.

- Pärt: Berliner Mass, Naxos. Should've boughten the ECM. 

- Brahms: Symphonies, Karajan digital. I only need half a dozen recordings of this, and while I'm getting down to that I could probably get rid of some Alsop as well. 

- The Mozart Brilliant Box. Listened to, maybe, ten disks in five years. 

- The Brahms Brilliant Box. Listened to most of it. Once was enough. 

- Rostropovich, Gilels, and Kogan playing piano trios. A 2-disk set, all in mono if I remember correctly, recorded when they were like teenagers. Listened to it one time, might listen again sometime, but I have all this stuff in modern sound. 

- A set of Haydn's London Symphonies. Years and years ago I went into a store intending to buy Davis and the Royal Concertgebouw, as per either Penguin or Gramophon, walked out with Franz Bruggen. Probably didn't notice for six months. Now I have Davis, and I could spare the Bruggen if I needed to. 

- Bolcom, Blake Songs. I don't get this and I don't believe I'll ever really love it, so I could spare it. 

- Bruch, Vieuxtemps, violin concerto, Heifetz. Maybe I'd keep it for the Vieuxtemps, but as far as the Bruch works go, for now the answer is Aaron Rosand. Never heard anything like it. 

- Tchaikovsky, Wieniawski, Brahms, Schumann: violin concertos, Bell. Have all this in other recordings that I enjoy just as much as Bell's, though nothing at all is wrong with Bell's. 

- Smetana, Ma Vlast, Naxos 
- Orff, Carmina Burana, Naxos
- Monteverdi, Vespers, Naxos
- Hadyn, The Creation, Naxos
- Dvorak, Symphony #9 & Symphonic Variations, Naxos - all of these are relics from my days as a poor underfunded college student taking my first steps in classical music, and have been superseded by later purchases. 

Enough for now.


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## science (Oct 14, 2010)

Vesteralen said:


> For me, it's a space problem. We downsized a couple of years ago and I just don't have the room to keep as much stuff as I used to. (Though I did manage to hang on to five or six bookcases full of books.)
> 
> At least with CDs and LPs, I can envision myself playing most, if not all of them, again given enough time. With DVDs and VHS tapes, it's different. We'll sit there and look at the shelves of them when we want to watch something and end up streaming Netflix or watching something from the DVR instead. It's a lot harder to rewatch a movie than it is to replay a recording for me. So, that makes it a little harder to cull the audio collection. Plus, there's that "completist" thing. I may not enjoy Alfven's Fourth or Fifth Symphony as much as I do the first three, but am I really going to get rid of 4 & 5? I doubt it.


I understand with the VHS tapes. Won't be long and we won't even be able to play them anymore. I have a few seasons of Eagles games I taped, but in a year or two the NFL will have all that available for streaming - and all the highlights are on youtube....

I have an old magazine problem. Piles of _The Economist_, _Atlantic Monthly_, _Scientific American_, to which I used to subscribe, and random others that I picked up here and there. (Also _National Geographic_, but I'm keeping those.) It is mildly interesting every now and then to flip through a 2003 issue of _The Economist_ and laugh about what we all thought then. But if I need the space....


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## Taneyev (Jan 19, 2009)

The plan to get rid of Gilels-Kogan-Slava trios because he have it on modern recordings is just one of the most brilliant I heard in a long time. It's like to sell your Bentley limousine from the 50s because you have a new car.


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