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Best place to buy classical music CDs cheaply?
Aug 16, 2013 at 1:21 PM Post #46 of 53
Quote:
bigshot said:
It's kind of ironic that Szell would be disliked by a modern conductor, because Szell was one of the first conductors who valued precision and correctness over expression and individual license. That makes him one of the moderns more than fitting into the league of Stokowski and Toscanini. Szell is a "safe" conductor because he doesn't extend beyond the letter of the score, which is good for a beginner. Later on, as they become more familiar with the works, more individualistic and expressionistic approaches might appeal to them more.

I think it's VERY important for someone's first exposure to a work to be a solid, well thought out performance. I had a few records in my early days that were mediocre performances... bad Brahms, bland Sibelius, etc... and they turned me off to those composers. I later came to learn that the problem wasn't the composers, it was the performances.

Itt's much better to start with a few really good recordings, than to throw your net wide and expose yourself to a bunch of crappy ones. Thankfully, the mega boxes, like the Living Stereo and Decca Sound boxes allow you to have your cake and eat it too. 50 fabulous performances for a couple of bucks a disk. Can't beat that.
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Those are some good looking sets right there. Why couldn't you have opened with that recommendation? Instead, the thread got fairly derailed into something that the OP probably wasn't going for. Anyway Slayer I hope you have found at least something to look into. The living stereo set mentioned above looks brilliant.
 
Aug 16, 2013 at 1:23 PM Post #47 of 53
I did open with that suggestion.
 
Aug 16, 2013 at 4:14 PM Post #49 of 53
Punnisher, don't know about this thread but there have been quite a few recently about good value boxed sets generally from Amazon; I remember a Beethoven one which someone originally posted about on the Talkclassical forums that was mentioned here.
Quote:
bigshot said:
I had a few records in my early days that were mediocre performances... bad Brahms, bland Sibelius, etc... and they turned me off to those composers. 
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What a pity for you; Sibelius was one of my first loves as a kid. Of course I feel more sorry for the unfortunates who at the time had to put up with your insistence that those composers were second, third or fourth rate or at the very least "overrated"  
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Aug 18, 2013 at 2:42 PM Post #50 of 53
I'd also like to suggest going to your local Goodwill, thrift store, or Salvation Army also.  If you go fairly frequently you can often find very good albums for cheap.  Also it is not much of a gamble as with it being so cheap a crappy performance won't hurt you that badly in the wallet.  I got into classical from a copy of the Sony Classical performance of Yo-Yo Ma(an amazing cellist) playing a Shostakovich Trio with Emmanuel Ax and Isaac Stern.  I listen to it to this day.  
 
This is the exact cd I got.  I think I picked it up for $.99.  
 

 
Aug 18, 2013 at 3:03 PM Post #51 of 53
Goodwill/thrift/secondhand stores can be great for vinyl. I found probably 150 lps and a dozen full sets/operas for .25 each lp. Some are heavily used but many were likely unplayed and pristine.
 
Aug 18, 2013 at 7:31 PM Post #53 of 53
If you look through the classifieds for garage sales with large record collections, you can call them and tell them you'll haul away whatever they can't sell (which will be most everything). Instant record collection for free!
 
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