strings/ensemble renditions are good didactic entry points to the AoF when you are beginning to discover its depths, thanks to the different colors, and a tendency to overemphasize subject entries

basedline, i'm sorry but the emersons, while nowhere near the worst, wouldn't make my top 50. an issue for me is the hurried tempi and lack of gravitas in key emotional-spiritual moments. and would it be too obvious of me to say there is too much vibrato? :^)

let, which piano recording did you hear, and was it your first?

Yes, the vibrato is yikes! : ) Anyways, luckily (?) for me I do not listen to classical music anymore. I might want to engage with the genre again some day though, so until then solidify your RYM list honey, so I can steal recommendations. You probably know by now that I disagree with your taste 85% of the time and that's okay, cause from all the people on the internet, I'm remarkably impressed of your ability to discern between quality recordings and renditions and shite ones. At least that is what sticks out to me when I stalk your actions hihi

yes, you have abandoned virtually all music made before 1992 in favor of easy-listening jotw-style quirky hifi music that pleases your delicate gamma male audiophile ears... that's fine, but you've failed to acknowledge that the best-sounding music in the world is being put out by classical sacd labels like aeolus, bis, harmonia mundi, pentatone... koreans just can't compete tbh

Best-sounding, hmm. I dunno, a good recording doesn't necessarily have good mixing. Talk Talk has stellar mixing, but not so good recording quality, and it sounds better than quite a lot of classical recordings. Harmonia Mundi with their B- grade staging will never do justice to more complex compositions. Haven't heard about the others because I'm not a nerd.. who follows labels anyway?

My hot take is that classical music peaked under Vivaldi and and imploded after Part, everything in between is one big technical yawn akin to all those cloned sprouts of the prog scene. I can see classical, still, as the greatest genre out there, that if you fulfil the following conditions: 1) have an imperialistic mentality and have great body posture and 2) have friends who are also passionate about it. Unfortunately I listen to music for myself exclusively so I don't seek to meet any expectations.

Apart from the stale big movements that shaped classical into the sorry joke that it is today, the hive-mind elitism of the scene is also what drives me away from the idea of attempting to approach it again. Beethoven and Brahms fanboys with small dicks who act like big critics all gang up on Haydn, Schubert, Part and even Vivaldi, for what are literally the dumbest reasons imaginable. From the outside it is easy to see they do it to cope with their lack of taste and rotten souls. I believe that the most vocal classicalheads are rather hemorrhoidal.

So yeah, no thank you! I like the beauty of the world. Give me Korean beats! (although I hate Korean music so no idea what you're on about)

@Havey I listen to a performance by Koroliov

Album Rating: 4.5

"Yes, the vibrato is yikes"



I was basically waiting for someone to say that. lmao

It's obviously not fashionable these days given how common historically informed performances of baroque music have become, but I prefer Bach with vibrato....or at least somewhere between outright romantic interpretation, and the new standard without it. This interpretation lies somewhere in the middle I think, or at least compared to recordings of Bach captured from the early-to-mid 20th century. Hilary Hahn's latest recording of the sonatas and partitas is another great example of that happy medium.