Moving, Organizing Classical Records and More Friggin’ Records!

Over the course of the past few entries here, I’ve made reference to the fact that I moved into a new place. I am conscious of how blessed I am to be able to make such a transition at this point in my life. In fact, I couldn’t imagine having to make such a move in the years ahead of me. Not that I’m particularly old by today’s standards, but what complicates my ability and desire to move is my not-so-convenient record collection.

Oh, sure. I could have been a stamp collector. Or a coin collector. Or even a comic book collector. But, no: records, compact discs, reel tapes, cassettes, 45s and yes even 8 track tapes. Since I was about 7 years old. And I haven’t been 7 in a looooong time. My collection was already obnoxious enough before I caught the classical bug – a disease I had long feared since I knew what could lie ahead. I recall making reference on the blog here to The Classical Annex. Tower Records, in the old days, often had a totally separate store just for classical music located nearby their already bulging popular, jazz and everything else store. Taking my cue from Tower, I decided to create my own Classical Annex – for my physical music collection and for my reflections here. I just couldn’t see filing my Beethoven LPs next to my Bee Gees records. Not that I make much of fuss about appreciating different styles of music. It has more to do with organizing.

Ugh. Organizing. Classical music makes for some challenges in this department. Before the move, I created some home-made shelves for the express purpose of organizing the classical records. I was pretty stoked since it was a wall-length cabinet that fit perfectly in my basement. Yes, I was a basement, man-cave dweller for a number of years. With the move I have been forced above ground and those home-made shelves are not, shall we say, aesthetically pleasing. Fair enough. So, until a few weeks ago, the bulk of my classical LPs were confined to The Garage. Not that it was a bad thing since the new garage is not that different from the old basement. But, there are lots of other things that need to be in the garage and I felt separated from my records.

So it was I found some very affordable new shelving units that allowed me to move the rest of my classical LPs up into the above-ground-man-zone. It was with great relief that I managed to fit and organize them all thusly.

Of course I have another side cabinet with more classical records – many box sets and a number of old mono jobs. In general, I managed to maintain a reasonable approach to organizing – roughly chronological and regional. Outside of those parameters I have separate sections for guitar music, piano music and opera. Not to mention “world music” releases.

The benefit of all this is a renewed interest in some records I haven’t played in awhile. For example, I’d missed hearing this great Mozart LP:

As well as my favorite Bach cello record:

I also wanted to hear a more recent Brahms’ 1st since I feel like I’ve finally connected with this symphony via the mystery Camden LP I posted in another entry.  I’d had this Szell / Cleveland version for a while so I gave it a spin to see how it measures up.

Enjoyable, yet there is still something missing from Szell’s performance that is evident in the mystery Camden version. I still haven't discovered who is actually performing on this disc:

Over the past year I'd noticed as my collection was growing I kept running into a lot of the same LPs in the thrift shops. As much as I like Beethoven's 5th Symphony, there are only so many of those that I'm going to drag home. Even with some of the more esoteric composers, there are certain popular pieces that get recorded over and over again. So, I began to notice where classical LPs might exist at all, chances are I already had the more popular titles. And finding the offbeat stuff isn't as easy, at least not cheaply.

However, I once again was reminded that it sometimes pays to return to places you may have previously written off. Some of my usual haunts have been starting to dry up as of late. I found myself this weekend going into a thrift that I had avoided for awhile because I'd only seen the most battered copies of Herb Alpert you'd ever see there. Maybe some well-loved Barbara Streisand. Hopeless, usually. Well, well! Here's what I walked out with:

About 50 classical platters, many of which were modern classical and mainly stuff I'd never heard before - MINT SHAPE. The woman behind the counter remarked how she'd just put those records out onto the shelves. Needless to say I was happy to get them out of her way. Here's a quick look into what I found:

Busoni Violin Sonatas 1 & 2. Pressed by Decca in the UK. There were several imported LPs included in the mix. Can't beat the sound on those discs. Managed to listen to this record already. Violin and piano. Great!

I think I may have uttered an explicative when I saw this Conlon Nancarrow album. This is the kind of stuff I usually only dream about. Not that it's an expensive record, per se. It's just too friggin' cool!

Ditto the Ligeti record. Believe it or not, even before I saw the big LIGETI name I noticed the record label symbol - Wergo. That's all I needed to see to put it in the "to go" pile. If it's on Wergo it's going to be interesting. By this point I wouldn't have been shocked to see some Stockhausen. Unfortunately I didn't this time.

Found another one of those Westminster Gold albums. Not exactly a striking cover this time, but John Williams is a favorite guitarist and I'd never heard of the composer Fernando Sor before. As it turns out - great stuff!

I was really happy to see this 3 disc box of Shostakovich's Complete String Quartets Volume 1. Especially since I'd scored the Volume 2 box a few months ago. Now I'm set for his string quartets! Awesome!

There were a number of vocal records too. I'm not so big on that stuff, but I had to grab a few examples. Here's a record of songs by Debussy. Songs by Debussy? Hmmmm. Yeah, I'll give that a whirl for a dollar. Nice 60s DG "tulip" label import.

Just as I was typing this entry up I had to play this record twice. Well, at least side two. Side one has an interesting Hindemith string quartet - #1 apparently. I like Hindemith well enough, but I'd never heard the composer on side two. WHOAH! Malipiero's piece, Rispetti E Strambotti for String Quartet, is really awesome! The only downside to this record is that I ended up with the fake stereo copy. Would have preferred the mono (I guess this was one of the earliest Nonesuch releases since the mono catalog number is H-1006. I have H-1001 somewhere and it is indeed a mono record.) Perhaps I'll find the mono somewhere down the line.

Well, there you have it. Just goes to show it always pays to look in places you'd least expect to find cool platters in. Maybe since those records blew out of the store so quickly maybe they'll try to put more out in the future. I'll be sure to post the better records from this haul in entries down the line.  Happy hunting and listening!