Erich Leinsdorf & Los Angeles Philharmonic - Wagner - Die Walküre: Ride Of The Valkyries | Tristan Und Isolde: Prelude To Act I | etc
One more Sheffield, with the volume turned up
So glad you got the opportunity! I heard our Indianapolis Symphony perform that a couple of months ago, and it was absolutely incredible. A wonderful piece to hear live.
I’ve had both of those Sheffields in my library since the early ‘80s. I listen to them often.
Back from 2 weeks in Europe, and I’m finally over the jet lag and back to listening to music.
This was one of the most exciting finds I’ve had in a second-hand record store - DGG’s 1980 issue of Bernstein’s Beethoven cycle with the Vienna, in an 8-LP box. Unfortunately, while I can’t fault the performances, the sound (at least through Symphony No. 3) is Deutsche Grammophon at their mediocre worst - flat, lifeless and uninspiring, something I found far too often in their recordings from the ‘70s. Maybe at the time of its initial issue people thought more highly of it, but DGG and other record companies of all stripes have moved so far on since then that I’m afraid its appeal, like that of Toscanini’s recordings with the NBC Symphony Orchestra, is largely historical. But I’ll continue working my way through it. Maybe there are pleasant surprises ahead.
BTW, no turntable shot on this one - the box is too big, cumbersome and heavy to put in that close proximity to the Prime 21. 
Continuing backwards through my classical LPs, today’s selection is a 5-disc box set of Beethoven’s ten Sonatas for Violin and Piano, performed by a pair of dark-haired and very earnest youngsters - Itzhak Perlman and Vladimir Ashkenazy, who always had remarkable chemistry together. This was a London/Decca album, no. CSA-2501, issued in 1978, and the sound is quite nice. They’re all great, but my favorite will always be the 9th - the “Kreutzer Sonata,” which I first investigated after reading the Tolstoy novella named for it, while i was in college.
Perlman, look on substance on the art cover!
