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One or two (or maybe a few more) Philips CDs are now wending their way down here from Amazon USA 😉

meanmistermustard said
Listening to Holst’s ‘The Planets’. Surprised in how familiar it is despite not knowing the names of the pieces or having set out to listen to it before.

Yes, I remember thinking the same when the Jupiter (I think it was that one) section started.

On the buying front – I have ordered a box of Delius (18 CDs) which will be really new territory for me. I thought I should get all Brit patriotic in my explorations 😉

The Brit exploration went into overdrive today with EMI boxes of Vaughan Williams and Elgar – both conducted by Sir Adrian Boult.

Oh, and the EMI Jaqueline du Pre box.

I will be a lot better off when Presto Classical finish off their “up to 50% off classical boxes” sale in a few days. Those mentioned above were all at 50% discount – and their postage to Australia from the UK is really cheap as well.

No, I don’t really need or want a Holst box. Do I?

meanmistermustard said
Was listening to Beethoven’s 5th Symphony earlier and the famous movement (which turns out to be the first of four) really isn’t the best part. To me it resembles when you find a catchy riff and you keep playing around with it to the point of it getting dull. Afterwards you move on and create the proper stuff.

This is my favourite piece of classical music (just); partly because it was the one which started my interest in classical in a major way (so it brings back great memories), but also because it is a wonderful piece in its own right. I tend to agree with your thoughts – it gets better after the novelty of the initial hook has faded (something which rock songs like Smoke On The Water rarely manage to do). The opening of the last movement is particularly memorable.

^ Cheers, nice orchestra – it could be quite an old recording as Krips was their conductor in the early 1950s. Every conductor approaches a piece in different ways; some of the differences can be quite subtle – but some can be quite dramatic – like playing faster on period instruments or going slower and accentuating the mood of the piece. One of the ongoing debates is how a piece “should” be played – with yet another camp arguing that the music is there to be interpreted.

meanmistermustard said
Does it matter it was recorded in the early 50’s? 
 

[SNIP]

Currently i have BBC Radio 3 on which is playing some Russian Opera, i forget who by. The devil and about 34 people have come to some lasses house to seduce her so nice and cheerful is the theme. Who would have thought I’d be sitting listening to a Russian Opera but it was either that or some report on BBC Radio 4 that was heavily weighed in manipulating me on some issue or other. The Russian Opera is actually quite pleasant and enjoyable once you get passed a) its in Russian, b) you have little idea what is going on (if you dont speak Russian) and c) the natural reaction is its a lot of people shrieking either loudly or not.

It only matters in that it will give folks a bit of an idea of how it has been interpreted – these things tend to go in cycles regarding the size of orchestra used, the speed of the performance etc. The sound quality of some of those older recordings can be, as you suggest, excellent.

So, umm, what happened to the lass? Sounds a lot of fun.

For @meanmistermustard and others who may be exploring Classical Music and wondering what to listen to and who the composers of interest may be, this book is great:

It can be found cheaply on ebay or perhaps your local library can get a copy in. It has good biographies of the main composers, including a discussion of the type of music they compose. It then lists their key works and tells you what to listen out for when you are listening to them. There is also a guide to some of the better CDs of each of those compositions. It does a pretty good job of being all three things – a guide to composers, a listening guide and a buying guide.

It also has some interesting “sidebar” articles on musical topics of interest; and where a composer has made a significant contribution to a particular area of music (such as Beethoven and the classical symphony) it also gives an overview of that contribution before examining particular works.