Tomita Dies at 84
Isao Tomita Dies at 84; Combined Electronic and Classical Music
The NPR Classical 50
Ted Libbey and others have compiled 50 classical works over at the NPR site.
Welcome to 2014
Yes, I have been working on the site, just in the background for the past month or so 🙂 Well, finally completed the reorganization of the CBS Great Performances listings. Cleaned up the layouts, fixed a few errors, found better covers, and even added a few back cover scans. BTW if you have some of these releases, please feel free to send on any back cover photos or CD booklet photos. I have almost every work, but not all are in…
The Return of Everest Records
Everest Records recorded the bulk of its famous classical albums from 1958 into the early 1960’s. Featuring new stereo recordings that were recorded on 35mm magnetic tape, its goal was to put out the best sounding classical albums available. On the recording roster were Stokowski, Susskind, and composers conducting their own works such as Aaron Copland. In the 1990’s CDs of much of the catalog were re-released, then just vanished except for the odd release by other labels. Countdown Media…
NPR Classical 50
Ted Libbey, author of ‘The NPR Guide to Building a Classical CD Collection’ has a feature on NPR called ‘The NPR Classical 50’. Libbey and host Fred Child discuss popular classical works and have recommendations of recordings. These are short reviews with some interesting antedotes and sound clips from 2009. http://www.npr.org/series/99866406/the-npr-classical-50 I have had Libbey’s book for years, and found it overall to be a good primer for those looking to explore the classics. The writing is casual, with a…
New York Philharmonic Archives
Now this is a find: The New York Philharmonic has a Digital Archive online featuring a wealth of material. One great part is the programs from the NY Phil concerts. For example, I did a search for ‘Donizetti’ and came across the program for a 1950 concert. [Note: as of August 2017 seems the images of the booklet are now missing, but will leave up link in case it gets fixed sometime] There is a scan of the program with…
LP Artwork
Sometimes I go searching for original artwork for a CD or an MP3 album I have purchased, especially the classical releases that get repackaged over and over again. I ran across a treasure trove of older album images at Piano Piano’s Flickr page. Wow, literally thousands of photos of albums. A great resource for those looking to get some information on an old release. A lot of the images are of the back side liner notes too. A great find!…
New Series: Starter Collection
I am working on a new series of posts, hopefully with some great recordings that may interest you: The Starter Collection. “The Starter Collection” are recordings that I first acquired when getting into classical music. Mostly from the bargain labels of the time [early 1980’s], there are some great recordings that I still enjoy to this day. London Jubilee, CBS Great Performances, CBS Odyssey, even a few Vox recordings made up the bulk of my purchases. They were affordable and…
London Jubilee
One of those bargain lines from London Records in the early 80s, the London Jubilee label made up the bulk of my early classical music purchases, along with the CBS Great Performances line. As these records and cassettes were my first exposure to a lot of works, they have stuck in my mind as sounding right as far as performances go. That tends to happen when you get familiar with a particular recording. Luckily most of the releases were of…
Vinyl Classics: Rimsky-Korsakov
Every once in a while I go to the local thrift stores, and come across some great vinyl finds. I have always collected vinyl, even when I changed to all CDs for my classical music. Lately I have gotten back into listening to my records, and there are still some great LPs that are either not on CD or are in a budget release that has next to nothing as far as info or liner notes, which I really enjoy…
BasicRep.com turns 10!
To all the BasicRep visitors: In August of 2001, I had an idea: list the CDs of my favorite Classical Albums to guide new and older listeners of the classics through the plethora of releases available. Over the years, the site has undergone many changes. The concept was to be able to link to albums that were in print, so you could go to your local store with the label and catalog number listed, or click to an online store…