Just in case anyone here is interested, I've just put up a classified for a relative of the DT48, Beyerdynamic DT480. Free to a good home.

  Out of curiousity, do you feel the same way about Carlos Kleiber?

  Funny that, it seems he both is and isn't. On the one hand everyone seems to agree that he was one of the very greatest conductors of the 20th century. On the other hand he just doesn't seem to have the glamorous image that would make that a record company (DG/Universal for instance) would...

  Very nice to see this mentioned. This has long been one of my favourite recordings. I prefer it to Howard Shelley's Hummel recordings. 'Fun' is indeed the only way to describe it, the sheer sense of enjoyment in playing this music really comes across so well.     Good choice, although...

Indeed, I think you can leave 'almost' out of that sentence. I haven't come across a single harpsichord cd where dynamic levels aren't ridiculously high. Combine that with sensitive headphones and I regularly run out of room at the lower end of the volume knob. Very annoying.

Philistines! 

  He also did an album of Bartok solo piano works. Really good.   And he recorded a work by Michael Tippett.

  Funny that, and I don't know whether my traversal through the Perahia box will change this, but my favourite Perahia recording up till now is actually the recording of Bartok's Sonata for two pianos and percussion that he did with Georg Solti. I own quite a few recordings of this 20th century...

  Well, if it was good enough for Bach....   Given the amount of music he composed for it, Bach obviously loved the harpsichord, as well as the organ. I think that there's definitely something about instruments where dynamics come about as a result of harmonic density and registration that...

  Well, I haven't reached Bach yet. That came later in Perahia's career and I'm listening chronologically. I'm actually rather picky when it comes to Bach recordings on the piano (I prefer the harpsichord), so I wonder how I will react to Perahia.

  I recently bought the big black Perahia box (because it was just insanely cheap over at importcds.com) and I'm already finding it a more rewarding experience than the Rubinstein box (sorry, Arthur).

  There are very few fjords in Finland. Lakes, yes, fjords, no.

  Masur unfortunately was never a really great conductor and can be very heavyhanded. But, throughout most of his career he has been conducting one of the most exceptional orchestras in the world (Gewandhausorchester) and that can really help.

So I guess I have to choose one single recording as well. This actually made me regret my suggestion, because it's impossible for me to make such a choice and be satisfied with it. So in the end it's still a situation of 'close your eyes and pick one blindly out of many valid choices'. The...

  Yesterday I was just thinking that recommending single 'best' recording actually makes me quite unhappy. Because I don't think any single recording can give an even remotely complete picture of a great work.   For example: If I was asked for several recommendations for the Bartok string...