Braithwaite & London Philharmonic Orchestra - Frank Bridge - Overture “Rebus”
I really don’t know these pieces, or really much about Bridge at all but I like what I’m hearing so far.
I like that when a classical music album show some antique painting as art cover, to make it fit with classical music and seems more appealing!
This massive 18-LP box set is one of the handful of records my wife brought to our relationship, though if I asked her about it, she’d no doubt say she has no recollection of it. “The Complete Organ Music of JS Bach,” on Murray Hill Records, a division of Crown Publishers, and issued in 1967 by arrangement with Vox Productions. The recordings were made on a variety of European organs, all played in a most relaxed manner by Walter Kraft. He seems technically proficient, if not taken with theatrics. I’ll put it this way - he’s certainly not Virgil Fox or E. Power Biggs. But that’s OK. The laid-back performances match the recording. It makes for nice background music, though - please! - not all 36 sides in succession. 
The first complete set of Brandenburgs I bought for myself, this is a 2-LP box from Pro-Arte (2PAX-2001), recorded on period instruments in 1976 and 1977, and issued in 1980. Performed by an unnamed* ensemble under Gustav Leonhardt (conductor and harpsichord), it’s very nicely played, but the recording is so polite as to be uninvolving. Part of that is surely the music and instruments of the baroque era - neither was known for, or capable of, large dynamic swings. But other, more enjoyable recordings manage to work within those constraints to good effect, like the recent and excellent Harmonia Mundi set by the Academy of Ancient Music under Richard Egarr. Here everything is held at arm’s length from the listener, like being seated at the rear of a not terribly live hall. It has the effect of making one wonder why someone would record in mono as late as 1977. Of course it isn’t really mono - it’s just a very narrow soundstage. To be fair, the recordings provide a little greater detail and they get a little more involving as you progress through the set - perhaps Bach was a little freer with his dynamic markings in the later works. Speaking of which, perhaps the best thing going for this set, for musicians at least, is that it includes a quarter-inch thick reproduction of Bach’s original score, should one want to try to follow along.
*By “unnamed,” I don’t mean the players are anonymous, only that the assembly of players lacks a title, at least on this record. All 30 of them are identified individually by name in the program notes.
Another of my wife’s additions to our joint library, this 1970 2-LP set from Columbia Masterworks (MG 30072), The Bach Album by the Philadelphia Orchestra under their long-time conductor Eugene Ormandy, acts as well of a “Bach’s Greatest Hits” album as could be imagined. Besides an incongruous orchestration (by Ormandy) of the famous Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, this includes A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring, the “Little” G Minor Fugue, Air on the G String, Sheep May Safely Graze, a portion of the Anna Magdalena Notebook, all among other short pieces. The recording is decent, and it’s always difficult to find fault with Ormandy and the Philadelphia (their string section’s practice of non-unison bowing notwithstanding).
And as the first alphabetically in my classical LP library, this record brings me to the end of my journey backwards through them all. It’s been a lot of fun rediscovering a lot of them, and sharing them with you.
There is also a Lyrita of the Bax 5th Symphony available. I have 1, 2, 5, 6, & 7 on CD. Not at home so I can’t confirm what I have on LP (really need to catalog them …)
Complete Sibelius Symphony cycles by Lorin Maazel (VPO), Herbert Blomstedt, Okku Kamu, Sakari Oramu, Colin Davis (BSO), Sir John Barbirolli, Paavo Berglund (Bournemouth & Helsinki), and Osmo Vänskä.
Oh nice - I didnt know they did a box set…
oh wait, you didnt say box set… But I didnt know there were that many. Will have to see which are on vinyl
