My two favourite 'Tallis fantasia' performances (as opposed to recordings) are Boult's 1940 Colston Hall (lovely distant orchestra and soloquartetpkayng) and Barbirolli's 1946 Holdsworth Hall,both HMV 78s of course.

The Barbirolli is the opposite of the dreamy pastoral idyll we tend to hear these days.It is all rigor and austere beauty.One can sense the stone wals of Waltham Abbey.

Well I finaly get round to adding my post to this thread.

I have a collection of about 350 LPs, with a focus mainly on orchestral works and violin concertos.  My first LP was Nigel Kennedy's Elgar VC with Tod Handley and the LPO.

Somewhere in my collection I have about 9 or 10 Tchaikovsky VCs, and a similar number of Brahmses.  I keep buying them 'cos it's just so interestng how different violinists approach the pieces, and I especially like the variety of playing you get on older recordings.

The prize of my collection, as far as collectibles goes, is one of a limited first edition of 3000 of Bloch, Schoenberg, and Berg from 1962.

My favourite? - Tricky.  I really love the Spivakovsky Tchaik VC.  And one of the Oistrakh Brahms (with Saxon State, Konwitshny).  But Mahler 2 from Rattle and the BCSO has good memories for me (loud, at college), and I am always cativated by Nadezhda Babkina's Russian Folk Songs.  I Don't know.  Ask me on Tuesday.

My most Embarrasing?  Ahem, Hooked on Classics Vol 3 - surely more embarrassing than vols 1 and 2, simply because I bought it.......

My most out of place?  Mel and Kim's 'Don't Worry' - although as a 45, I suppose that doesn't count.  Maybe the Sultan's of Ping, then.

Cheers

Tommo

Blimey Ron - what a coincidence!  I'm No.272  And you?

For me the 7 early songs are just the best thing on that record......

Tommo

Sometimes I think of dumping those LPs which I now have on CD but I haven't the heart. I regret giving away my Solti Ring on LP (the direct metal mastering edition) because it had some very interesting booklets with it. They were not like the ones with the current CDs but someone was trying to make Wagner's Ring like The Lord of the Rings, with cartoon drawings of the characters that looked a little like 1960s' hippies.

The first vinyl LP I was aware of was Famous Overtures from the World Record Club.

Not sure that this is strictly to do with vinyl but the special 50th aniversary programme of The Sky at Night has just come on on BBC4 with its theme tune - At the Castle Gates by Sibelius. In Patrick Moore's autobiography he recounts an interesting anecdote about when they did an outside broadcast. It was going out live, as so many programmes did then, and the music had to be played on a conventional grammophone player with someone putting the needle on to the record at the appropriate time, such was the technology at the time. Someone had forgotten to bring the 78 along and desperate attempts were made to find a replacement.

[It took me a very long time to get on to this site just to post this!]

This is the reason why I can't get rid of my Solti Rosenkavalier on LP: wonderful booklet with (in this case) beautiful drawings and photographs.

Did you get that a couple weeks ago?   If so, you outbid me, you #$(*.  my years-old cassette dub will have to continue to do.

hmph.

NMC were going to re-release it paired with the BBC Sniggers in Missa Brevis but Decca pulled out of the whole thing and refused to give permission.
The recent Metier disc seems to be the final result of that project so I'm not sure what's going to happen to the Decca recording. I'd like to think that someone somewhere will re-record it eventually...