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Topic: Classical music supertagging! (Read 16150 times) previous topic - next topic
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Classical music supertagging!

Hi.

I'm dealing with about 5000 tracks of classical music.

As I don't often see specifically related posts, I thought to start this thread where people dealing with classical music can converge to help each other sharing their views, screenshots, config, picture links, experience and so on.

As we well know, the big part of the online music world is by default focused on modern music rather then on classical - just look at the standard fields for tagging, pretty useless for the complexity the tagging of a classical piece usually involve - but, luckily enough, we found a player-database-manager that let us add all the fields we like.

Of course, before starting to populate a database one should design it: I think the first step to take is to define which kind of information we want to deal with and then make a list of all the fields the db should have.

Here's mine (by now):


Standard fields (to be kept and filled for compatibility purpose)


Artist -
- think to put here a copy of the content of the most meaningful among "composer" or "performer" or "conductor" for that track or just the composer


Album -
- usually the publisher catalog number followed by a brief description of the content i.e. - xDG413796 - Chopin - Preludes - Pollini  (I thought to put an "x" at the beginning of the album title to be able to list all of them together and not mixed up with non classical ones. Of course, any other code would be good, perhaps, the best would be "zzz" or "aaa" but for me an x is enough)

Album artist -
- I put here the name of the directory (artist) where the tracks are in. Of course this is where the various artists or VA standard discussion comes in

Title -
- if the track is a piece by itself it's OK, otherwise it should start with the "work" name and then, after some character (- or : or else), the number of the movement and, after a space the name of the movement
i.e. - Symphony No 9 in d min Op 125 - 01 Allegro ma non troppo, un poco maestoso

Tracknumber -
- as usual

Genre -
- just "classical" to selection purpose

Date -
- CD issuing year, useful for better identifing it with some guides or reviews where the CD number is not reported (yesterday I read a review of a Radu Lupu concert in Milan, where there was some words about a Grammy CD of his just indicated as "Schubert D960 and more" - Decca - 1994)

Rating -
- as usual


I can't think of other standard fields... so let's dive into special or extended fields:


Composer -
- just to avoid any misunderstanding who the artist is. As we are not using a relational database, I think it would not be easy to store the composer infos in some other place so, one can think of putting birth and death dates between parenthesis if one likes and the nationality too. I just put the surname because I don't like reverse showing (Bach Johann Sebastian) and I'm not sure to remember all the composers first names so, for all the fields involving people names I decided to use only the surname. When two surnames are the same I just add the name initial at the end:  Strauss Joh, Strauss Jos, Strauss R

Subgenre -
- it it usually referred as "musical form". What I mean is: Piano concert, Symphony, Preludes, and so on.
It won't be always easy to pick the right term for a composition but there are many lists online where one can look in.

Work -
- this is where I put: Symphony No 9 in d min - op 125.
As I said before, I add this also to the beginning of a track title for each track that's part of the work (see above)

Opus #-
- by now I have not an opus field because they are already in the track titles and in the work field but I'm thinking to add this field where to put the opus number alone. I still have to think about numbers after the opus one i.e. - Chopin Mazurka op 67 No 2

Catalog # -
- here I would put the Schubert "D" numbers or the Mozart "K" numbers or Bach "BWV" numbers. I dont know if it's worthwhile having a field by itself or make something different...

Performers -
- name of the performer + three spaces + (instrument)
I added the three spaces for readibility in album list.

Instruments -
- the instruments used in the composition i.e. - Piano\Orchestra or Voices\Orchestra\Choir - (remember that you can easily deal with multiple values in the same field with FB. This is true but not for WMA files. In fact, I discovered it at my own expenses as I had to convert 200 GBs of WMA to WavPack)

Conductor -
- just the conductor of the orchestra. If it's a performer too it will appear in the performer field too

Orchestra -
- the orchestra. Probably some kind of shortening would be useful...

Mood -
- as usual

People -
- if you are using WMAs you can think of a field that collects all the values of the other people fields and get them together. I abandoned this when I converted but it could be useful for quick searches.

Issuing year -
- it would be interesting putting here the birth date of the composition. I think it won't be always easy to get this kind of info unless you have a big music encyclopedia. This could be the starting point for some guru of ours to write a time line plugin to easily be aware of the time in which the piece was written 8maybe a graphical one.

Cultural current -
- sorry, I'm not mother tongue and I can't think of another way to express it.
What I mean is to have here words like: romanticism, baroque, early classic, late classic, and so on. The problem would be to stick to a standard list of expressions. Probably it could be possible to get this automatically starting from the field above and then selecting a word from a list but, not being a programmer, I really don't know.


Well, I think the thing it's alredy gone farher than I was thinking of so, let me stop here.

Now, it's up to you.

Enjoy.

Classical music supertagging!

Reply #1
What I do with classical music:

%artist% = composer (and I prefer 'Antonio Vivaldi' rather than 'Vivaldi, Antonio')
%album% = name of the work, not of the CD. Causes problems for multiple-composers CD
%opus% = opus number
%opus name% = opus name (BWV and so on)
%conductor% = conductor
%ensemble% = orchestra
%date% = year of composition (or first creation), not performance
%performer% = 'performer (instrument)', often a multiple field
%recording% = entire date (not only year), place and kind of recording (AAD, DDD, ...). I use this field for displaying purpose in trackinfo panel, not sorting, so it doesn't matter if sometimes the date is incomplete
%genre% = classical
%style% = Moyen-Age, Renaissance, Baroque, Classique, Romantique, Contemporain (sorry it's in French  )
%forme% = concerto, symphony, sonata, Opera, ...

I still have problems with multiple work- or multiple-composers CD... For example I don't know how to organize the tracks on my HD 

Classical music supertagging!

Reply #2
I try to be really minimalistic and use only these

%artists% - the last name of the composer
%title% - the name of the work
%album% - full name of the performers

Example:

%artist% - "Bruckner"
%title% - "Symphony No. 7 - II. Adagio. Sehr feierlich und sehr langsam"
%album% - "Berliner Philharmoniker / Eugen Jochum"

However, it is a bit problematic if I want to tag, say, a recording of Mahler 8, because there are 8 soloists and at least 2 choirs, making my %album% field very long!


 

Classical music supertagging!

Reply #4
Quote
%artist% = composer (and I prefer 'Antonio Vivaldi' rather than 'Vivaldi, Antonio')

I would rather like Antonio Vivaldi too but this means having two separate fields with firts and last name and the joint of the two in the artist or composer field.Of course everybody would sort for just the last name, I think. I can think only the track info panel would benefit of that so I can't decide if it's worthwhile. I don't know how much weight would have two more columns on the performance when you have 10000 tracks. Maybe some expert could kindly give us a hint.
Quote
%album% = name of the work, not of the CD. Causes problems for multiple-composers CD

I think that the CD number is a sensible piece of information and a usuful one for identifying and for replaygain purpose (you can keep the tracks of the album together). I usually put a couple of letters (after the "x") at the beginning to remind the publisher: DG DE PH etc. What comes after the number can be:
- "Beethoven - Symphony No 9 in D minor Op 125 - Karajan - ADD"  if in that CD there is only that work
- "Bach - Four lute suites BWV996-BWV997-BWV1006a-BWV995 - Williams (guitar)" if there are different works of the same composer with the same performer for them all. I usually add the performer name only if he is of particular meaning for me: I surely will put there Horowitz, Michelangeli but not Parkin (just to stick to the piano). That is not snobism but just a matter of personal interest. This is just a reminder, I surely will have Parkin too in the performer field.
- "Schubert - Symphony No 8 D759 - Schumann - Symphony No 3 Op 97 Rhenish"  if there are different composers. If there are different performers too I omit them here as I still will have them in ther proper field. If you like you can put them here too all the same: it's just a matter of readibility of a very lond field (by the way: does anybody know if there is any possibility to have a multiline showing field?)
Quote
%opus% = opus number

I wonder if it would be possible to automatically extract this infos from the file names, I have to make some tests with string parsing functions...
Quote
%opus name% = opus name (BWV and so on)

have to find out if the standard is with or without spaces between the letters and the numbers
Quote
%conductor% = conductor
%ensemble% = orchestra
%date% = year of composition (or first creation), not performance
%performer% = 'performer (instrument)', often a multiple field

When you say multiple field do you mean you are using the "performer" with no "%%" in album list or with "##" in playlist tree? Or you just write all the values as a list with some separator?Or you have fields like "performer 1", "performer 2" etc?
Quote
%recording% = entire date (not only year), place and kind of recording (AAD, DDD, ...). I use this field for displaying purpose in trackinfo panel, not sorting, so it doesn't matter if sometimes the date is incomplete

I have been putting here the recording date too but now, I feel I need a CD issuind date too for identifying purpose (remember the Lupu example). Of course I will put this in its own field.
Quote
%genre% = classical
%style% = Moyen-Age, Renaissance, Baroque, Classique, Romantique, Contemporain (sorry it's in French   )
%forme% = concerto, symphony, sonata, Opera, ...

Where did you get lists of styles and formes?Sometimes I feel not easy pidgeonholing things here or there: is all the Mendelsshonn music Romantic? Or none of it? To which style belong a thing like the Grieg's Lyric pieces? and Satie music?
Quote
I still have problems with multiple work- or multiple-composers CD... For example I don't know how to organize the tracks on my HD 

I think that with a well designed and carefully populated database the actual location of the files on the HD does not matter too much. FB has a very useful "Open directory" command to find them easily. My dir tree on the HD is the usual "Root\All music\Artist\Album\Tracks" one. Due to the ambiguity of the artist field, I didn't try to be too strictly consistent and so I put Bach's albums under Bach dir, more-than-one-artist albums under "Various" dir and Horowitz, Michelangeli, Karajan and some other important (for me) performer under their own dir.

Classical music supertagging!

Reply #5
Quote
I try to be really minimalistic and use only these

%artists% - the last name of the composer
%title% - the name of the work
%album% - full name of the performers

Example:

%artist% - "Bruckner"
%title% - "Symphony No. 7 - II. Adagio. Sehr feierlich und sehr langsam"
%album% - "Berliner Philharmoniker / Eugen Jochum"

However, it is a bit problematic if I want to tag, say, a recording of Mahler 8, because there are 8 soloists and at least 2 choirs, making my %album% field very long!
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=285635"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


You can always separate the values with "\" to make them behave like a multiple values field. Then, in the tagz strings you will have to use "field" insted of "%field%" and will find them listed under each one of the values singularly. You will always been able to use boolean functions when searching or querying to get only the pieces played by this AND that.

Be careful because the "\" separator seems to work only with selections of more than one file. If you have to tag a single track then you'll have to add more than one instance of the same field and not to use a separator.

Classical music supertagging!

Reply #6
Quote
As I use Musicbrainz to tag my files, I use these guidelines: http://wiki.musicbrainz.org/wiki.pl?ClassicalStyleGuide
[a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=285667"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]


I had a look at the link, thanks.

%artist%

I wonder how to keep that way of showing and the correct sorting (by last name, of course). I think the only easy way would be, as said in another post, to have 2 different fields for name and last name and have them joint in the artist field. Or to have a full name to show and a last name only to sort with.

%album%

Ok, provided I have the involved people names in their own fields too if I want to be able to easily search my db.

%track title%

I don't agree with the use of roman numbering because I think you can't correctly sort by them so, for me, better stick to usual numberings (padded with a zero as we know we can have 24 preludes or else) even for indexing the movement position inside a composition

Another thing to consider is to try to avoid using forbidden characters in artist, album and track title so to be consistent with the file and dir names. After all, a computer will have to deal with them so, better respect its (akward) language. It will be easy to recover infos with guessing, just in case you need it.

Classical music supertagging!

Reply #7
Different strokes for different folks, but this is how I do it:

For compatibility with my 'modern' albums I use %artist% for the composer and %album% for the work. E.g.

%artist% = Beethoven
%album% = Symphony No. 9 in D minor

At the moment I use the short names for composers (Beethoven rather than Beethoven, Ludwig Van which is more correct) but I plan to change this soon.

I have set naming schemes for certain types of work; for instance I usually say 'Piano Sonata' rather than 'Sonata for Piano', or 'Clarinet Concerto' rather than 'Concerto for Clarinet'.

If there's a well-known numbering scheme I'd say 'Piano Sonata No. 14'

If the piece is given a key in the works list (I tend to use Grove Music for those) then I'll append that, e.g. 'Piano Sonata No. 14 in C sharp minor'. I used to use b and # characters for flat and sharp but decided to make it more textual, and therefore more accurate (there's no 'flat' character even in Unicode fonts, as far as I know).

If there's a standardised dedication or nickname for a piece I'll add that, e.g. 'Piano Sonata No. 14 in C sharp minor, 'Moonlight''.

I group classical works by the album tag, not by the CDs. To me it's far more useful to be able to listen to a Symphony / Sonata / Concerto / Requiem etc. as a single entity than a CD album which might have a mix of pieces by different composers. I categorise by composer and then by work, so the classical CD format is actually quite unhelpful for me in categorisation

Next up are %performer% and %work% tags.

%performer% = Pollini, Jochum, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
%work% = Op. 015

%performer% is ordered thusly: soloists, ..., choirmaster, conductor, choir, orchestra. I only tend to use surnames as I know the first names of pretty much all the performers / conductors in my collection and there are very, very few duplicated surnames in Classical recordings. Still, it'd be relatively easy to add forenames.

%work% is used for Opus number or alternative catalogue number. I use this as my first sort field, so always include necessary padding 0s if a composer has written many works, such as in my Beethoven example above. With Bach, for instance, I'd use 'BWV 0806' as he has over 1000 catalogued works using a non-Opus system.

Sometimes I group a set of works which all have separate work numbers. For instance, the four Ballades by Chopin all have separate Opus numbers ranging from 25 to 52, but are usually grouped together. In this situation the %work% tag varies from track to track and the %album% will have a catch-all name such as 'Ballades'.

Spurious works or those catalogued differently will still have their respective catalogue numbers, e.g. the Nouvelle Etudes by Chopin which don't have a grouping Opus number but which have a BI number (130), if one examines a good works list.

Sometimes composers don't have a standard cataloguing system, such as Ligeti. In this case I use %date% (should probably be %year%) which conforms with my modern album tagging scheme whilst still making 'sense' from a Classical sorting point of view.

Last but not least are %tracknumber% and %title%:

%tracknumber% = 02
%title% = Marcia Funebre - Adagio assai

%tracknumber% is pretty self-explanatory; the index number of the track within the context of the work (not the CD, of course).

%title% contains the name of the track as generally listed in the CD programme. Generally that means a tempo indication as marked in the score; some larger grouped works also have keys or numbers for separate tracks (e.g. 'Two-Part Invention No. 1 in C major') and some have only a metronome mark, which annoyingly I can't represent with Unicode characters (e.g. '[Crotchet = 160]').

Those 6 tags are pretty much all I tend to use when tagging Classical music. I'm a musician, so the way I do it makes sense to me. My collection is sorted by %artist% (composer), then by %work%, then by %album%; this groups different performances of the same work together and avoids the problem of categorising Classical CDs with multiple works by multiple composers.

I find the MusicBrainz scheme generally too verbose and unnecessarily duplicative of information (particularly the work name). It also places far too little emphasis on catalogue number, which in academic circles at least is one of the main identifying features of a work, and puts multiple fields within a single tag (performer within album, for instance). This is why I came up with my own system. It's not perfect and lacks some information that could be useful (such as date of recordings: useful when a performer has recorded multiple versions of the same work) but serves me well enough for the vast, vast majority of music.

Hope that's not too dull

arty

Classical music supertagging!

Reply #8
This is exactly the thread I have been waiting for! I have about 600 classical CDs to rip and the only thing that holds me back is that I am still undecided how to tag those CDs for maximum information and flexibility.

I really like this approach by forum member guruboolez!  Allows all kinds of database research and very flexible for sorting.

Edit: This is another great post on how to deal with all the different parts in a classical compostion.

Classical music supertagging!

Reply #9
Yep, Guruboolezz is wanted in this topic

Classical music supertagging!

Reply #10
artist/composer - album/work - title/movement and conductors or performers in the comments, if you're into that sort of thing.  luckily for me i buy cds, so all i have to do is look at the cover. :|

Classical music supertagging!

Reply #11
I have mainly orchestral works, so the following applies to me:

%artist%: Kurt Atterberg
%composer%: Kurt Atterberg
%conductor%: Ari Rasilainen
%performer%: RSO Frankfurt
%title%: Lento
%album%: Symphony No. 5 'Sinfonia funebre'
%genre%: Classical
%tracknumber%: 2
%comment%: Additional info, like label etc...

I'm not very happy with the performer field. I like the idea of an ensemble tag. I probably want to rename it to performers. I'm about to handle it like this in future:

%ensemble%: Vienna SO
%performers%: Person A (Piano), B (Singer)
%opus%: 71

With regex it would be possible to get the Opus info out of the file names, but I do not know a tool that supports it. It then would be something like {op(us|\.|\s)(\s)*(0-9)*} to parse out of the file name... To sum it up, all bold text is what I'm planning to do.

I'm thinking about a tag for the movements name ("Lento") and using the title tag for the works name ("Symphony No. 5") but I'm not sure as it's not easy to apply (as title has not been used consistent here).

Classical music supertagging!

Reply #12
since i use foobar mostly for listening to Classical music, i tend to sort by 'Composer' in the Albumlist, so that makes for a slightly different approach (i have an 'evening music' playlist which holds all my other relaxed music i listen to, ie. jazz/blues/sinatra/soul, so that isn't really a problem here..

but to summarize my sorting/naming scheme (after a few revisions )

%title% -
Quote
Symphony No.9 Op 125:1 'Choral' - Allegro ma non Troppo, un poco Maestoso (D Minor)

this about sums that up.. Work type, followed by a number if >1 piece of that style written by the composer, followed by the Opus name+number.
Could also be
Quote
Brandenburg Concerto No.1 BWV 1046:4 - Menuetto, Trio I, Polacca, Trio II (F Major)

After this, a colon separates it from the movement number, followed by (if applicable) the "Name" of the piece, separated from the tempo indications and other comments by a dash, with the Key at the end between parentheses

%artist% - useless/superfluous.. i absolutely *hate* sorting classical music by album (mostly because i have an extensive Furtwängler collection, and if i had kept all albums, i would have most works 3 or 4 times just because of the remasters that got better over time).. which makes it utterly pointless to actually fill this in.. i usually just copy the %composer% to here for compatibility purposes.

%album% - since i don't actually use the album field, i tend to fill in the Work name here, but %work% would work too if you did care about albums. also superfluous since i don't listen to albums, but to works 

@person who said something about this being handy for RGing: it doesn't really have advantages if you do this on an album in stead of work basis, the only difference is that if you *don't* use %album% for the sorting by work, you'll have difficulty RGing in .9, since the devs cut out customization for RG scan strings.
Personally i'm unable to understand why you would want to RG (or sort) on anything but a per work basis.
The composer didn't write albums, he wrote works, and any combination of works on an album is strictly up to the preference of the studio..
Furthermore, if you were to pair say a Symphony with a Mozart Piano Sonata, you'd end up with a Symph that was AG'ed lower just because the sonata is a softer piece.. it seems silly.

%performer% - the soloist(s), separated by \, sometimes with the voices between parentheses (never with instruments, i know who plays what pretty much by heart )

%conductor% - conductor, though only when the conductor doesn't double as a soloist (usually on violin or piano/harpsichord) in the chamber orchestra.
not used with string quartets/quintets/sextets

%band% - orchestra.. this because the %band% field already existed, and means the same thing as orchestra, if for a different audience and with a slightly different size

%contentgroup% - opusnumber (+naming convention in front) ie. 'BWV 1080'
no specific reason why i use this, i'm not sure what contentgroup really means in english (or if it means anything at all), but i used to tag in musicmatch, and switched to fb after getting annoyed with its quirky nature and lack of actual evolution, and MMJB used that tag field for the opus numbers.. though i might at some later date switch to separating the 'bwv' and '1080' bits to different fields for sorting purposes, i'm not too bothered about it.

%key% - not used consistently by me, though i might change this in the future.. mostly for silly db sorting though

%genre% - the classical 'subgenre' here.. ie. classical/baroque/renaissance/medieval/modern
i don't actually use this very often, it's more for reference purposes..
To the mendelssohn=romantic? question: mostly.. beethoven obviously is the bigger problem, but mendelssohn 'feels' like a classical romantic to me.. since i don't really care about this much, i mostly just hit some composer in the albumlist and decide that way
%mood%/%preference% - pointless.. i don't have moods, i just have music i feel like at times

%date% - recorded date of the piece, usually just the year, unless that's ambiguous (for instance, furtwängler recorded 2 versions of beethoven's 9th that i'm aware of in 1942, and even though they were in different months, adding the actual date there seems sort of right.. this in a Mar 20-22, 1942 scheme.
Sometimes followed by the remaster year (with remaster between parentheses again), but only with recent sets, and only for sets that aren't remastered >1x, in which case i just keep the best version and throw the rest out.

%venue% - place where the performance took place, followed by the city (and sometimes the country if it's particularly unknown)

%tracknumber% - pointless, but for longer works (like say a Requiem) i do use %movement%, for obvious reasons.

Classical music supertagging!

Reply #13
Squeller, in another thread, wrote:

"Hi,

I continued this interesting thread, maybe you may add you ideas there?

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....pic=32721"

>>>>>>>>


QUOTE(Jun-Dai @ Nov 9 2005, 08:42 AM)
I'm curious to see how other people approach large collections of classical music.



I've a large collection of classical recordings and, like Jun-Dai, gave a fair amount of thought to what scheme of classification (tagging) I was going to use before I started out on the mammoth task of transferring it onto my HDD, which process I am still only part of the way through. (Incidentally, the most time consuming part of the process for me is not copying and compressing, but entering details to the standard, and in the format, that I require. The online information sources for the great majority of my CDs are either missing, inaccurate, incomplete, or some combination of these!)

The scheme that I am using is consistent and works well for me.

Album artist: *conductor* or, where none, *instrumentalist*
Album title: *composer* *work*
Composer: *composer*
Year: *year of recording*
Track title: *movement title*
Track artist: *orchestra*; *conductor*; [*soloist 1*], [*soloist 2*], etc

This system depends, of course, on separating original CD albums into albums based on single works. Occasionally this is not very useful, eg where the CD comprises a large number of very short works, in which case I keep the CD intact as the album – for instance under a title such as “Bach-Stokowski Orchestral Transcriptions”.

I use abbreviations to shorten display information - eg ov = overture, cto = concerto. Symphony is understood if I simply place a numeral after a composer’s name in the album title, eg Shostakovich 5 = Shostakovich’s 5th Symphony. I use surnames only, but will add an initial if necessary (eg Davis, C for Sir Colin Davis, as opposed to Davis, A). Orchestras are normally identified according to abbreviations - eg BPO, VPO, LSO, BBCSO - but occasionally are spelled out, if necessary. An example would be 'Philadelphia Orch', of which I have few recordings, rather than PO which I reserve for the Philharmonia Orchestra, of which I have many (esp 50s and 60s under the baton of the late, great Dr Otto Klemperer). Where I have two or more recordings of the same work by the same conductor, I will add (in brackets) the year of the recording to the album title in each case to differentiate them.

Depending on what software or player is used to retrieve and play music, there are then a number of different ways to find a piece. Through an alphabetical directory structure, you can go to the folder representing the composer, the conductor (ie album artist), the orchestra (ie in orchestral music the artist identified for tracks) or the year of recording. (Incidentally, I feel the year of issue is practically meaningless in classical music. Many of my recordings have been re-issued countless times over the decades since they were recorded.) If the software or player in use doesn't have the ability to search under directories as above, you could still find the work under the full list of albums which will invariably be displayed alphabetically according to composer.

I suppose the weakest link is the ease of finding a work according to a soloist, eg in a concerto, where the conductor will have been tagged as the album artist under my system, and the soloist only added to the track artist fields. If this were sufficiently important to me, I could set up a custom field for soloists and (software permitting) this field could be added to the available directory structures. In practice, I just type the name of the soloist into a search window and then select from the results.

Personally, I often think of core repertoire (especially) in terms of conductors, and I often feel like playing something (unspecified, until I’ve had a quick browse) by a particular conductor. That is one reason why defining the “album artist” as the composer of the work would be a poor practice for me. I need the album artist field in order easily to view items in the collection under a given conductor.

Here is an example of an actual CD tagged according to my system. It’s split between two different composers and is tagged as two separate albums. The CD is a live stereo recording in the VPO 150th anniversary edition, published by DG in 1991 – CD 435 327-2. (The recordings are currently available - on separate discs, with other works - in Testament’s recently released Klemperer / VPO box set, which is to be recommended, but I digress ..)

Album: Schubert 8 ‘Unfinished’
Album artist: Klemperer
Composer: Schubert
Year: 1968
Track 1 title: I Allegro moderato
Track 1 artist: VPO; Klemperer
Track 2 title: II Andante con moto
Track 2 artist: VPO; Klemperer

Album: Beethoven 5
Album artist: Klemperer
Composer: Beethoven
Year: 1968
Track 1 title: I Allegro con brio
Track 1 artist: VPO; Klemperer
Etc for remaining 3 tracks – you get the idea!

The system described above might not suit everybody, but it serves me well.

 

Vigo Brogs