Hi,
when finding classical music I always have the problem that there are a lot of recordings of every piece. So it is difficult to figure out what might be the best recording.

Normally I go for conductors like Bernstein, Barenboim and Karajan and orchestras like the Berliner Philharmonics.

Problem is that that is about the only few things I can look for.
So I was wondering what do you look for when you want to find the best recording of some piece?
Which conductors?
Which orchestras?
What other things do you look for?

Labels.
I can't tell good recodings since I'm not familiar with mastering. However, although I like Russian performers(Mravinsky, Rozhdestvensky, Leningrad Philharmonic), I can say that recodings from Russia(Melodiya) usually aren't good. (noise, clicks, equalizing) I don't know about recent (post-U.S.S.R.) recodings.

Buy the Gramophone Classical CD guide (or the Gramophone magazine).

That would be my advice in the UK, anyway.

Or shop at the kind of classical music shops that know what they're selling, and ask them for advice. This doesn't work so well at most branches of HMV, Virgin, Tower etc! However, most shops will play CDs for you, allowing you to make up your own mind.

Cheers,
David.

Thank you for the tips.

I asume you mean this book?

Look like a good starting point.

About shops: I usually get my music from the library so that is not really interesting for me.
In Denmark it is legal to copy music from the library for personal use (I'm not sure if they just changed that law again though) and I can order music from all libraries in teh country so that is very useful.

Anyway thanks for teh book tip. I think I'll order that.

I agree completely. Better newsstands oR magazine shops in the USA stock Gramophone, and their reviewers opinions (on music at least) are consistantly excellent IMO.

They do have a website of course.

I was recently looking for advice on recordings of Bruckner's symphony no. 9 and found this site to be helpful:

www.classical.net

I ended up buying Tintner's version (with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra) on the Naxos label.

Worst thing to do. Great conductors are never universal. They have affinities with some composers (Jochum/Bruckner, Katchen/Brahms, Kempff/Beethoven...) but are sometimes completely strangers with other universes. Monteverdi's recording of Karajan are for exemple pathetic...

Reviews are very useful, but don't take them as absolute truth (especially amateur's opinion on web). The same record could be considered as recording of the year by one reviewer and completely boring by another one. In France, there are (three) monthly magazines reviewing up to 400 CD per month. Each disc is reviewed, rated, and the "best" one are crowned by a reward. One magazine (Diapason) also offer a sample CD with one track of the recompensed records: you could judge by yourself.
A radio programme on "France Musiques" also compare each sunday many performance of the same composition. Comparison are done by journalists or artists (three or four), and in blind situation (that's sometimes funny, because well-known reference are sometimes flamed ).

Best thing to do is in my opinion to find reviewer with the same affinities as yours. Or try to find many comments about the same recording. Or, most expensive solution: buy various performance of the same work, for comparison (and enjoy differences!)

[meh]holy thread resurrection[/meh]

I just want to thank the people giving advise here.
I got both the "Gramophone Classical Good Cd Guide 2004" and "The Penguin Guide" and they have been very useful on building my collection.

The penguin guide is IMO much better. It has a lot more reviews (a least on the material I wanted) whereas Gramophone usually only had a couple of recommendations for each piece.

The Gramophone guide is better organized however whereas in the penguin guide it can become difficult to figure what you want to get since here are so many recommendations and since they are all good it is difficult to figure out which praising words that count the most.

If you will only get one guide I'd get the penguin guide.



Regards,
Jan