Classical Artists in General – Then And Now.

I was going through my vast collection of vinyl records and CDs the other day and it struck me that I could almost open a record store if I wished. I could sell my entire collection of mainly classical music and the likes of it to anybody interested, and what a collection they would have! Some of the vinyl records I have in my collection are priceless, those out-of-print, limited editions and the like.

I have in my collection a range of works from Bach's “Art of The Fugue”, “ Brandernburg Concertos”, “Christmas Oratorio” “Keyboard Concertos” and “Well-tempered Clavier” to the likes of Bartok's “String Quartets 1-6” and “Sonata per violino solo” to Beethoven's Symphonies 5-9. Something that I should've done ages ago is to make a database of my entire collection. It has now turned into a Herculean effort as the numbers run into thousands.

Now, let’s get back to my collection. For the uninitiated, my list of Classical Music artists covers the likes of Berg, Berlioz, Brahms, Britten, Bruckner, Cajkovsky, Charpentier, Chopin, Corelli, Couperin, Debussy, Dvorak, Elgar, Falla, Faure, Gesualdo, Grieg, Handel, Haydn, Hindemith, Holst, Ives, Janacek , Ligetti, Liszt, Machaut, Mahler, Mendelssohn, Messiaen, Monteverdi, Mozart, Mussorgsky, Orff, Paganini, Penderecki, Prokofev, Purcell, Rachmaninov, Ravel, Saint-Saens, Schoenberg, Schubert, Schumann, Schutz, Sibelius, Skrjabin, Shostakovich, Strauss, Stravinsky, Szymanowski, Telemann, Tippett, Varese, Webern, Vaughan Williams, Verdi, Vivaldi and Wagner. Wow, did I leave out any artists? And these are just the ones that fall under the Classical Music category, old school in today’s slang, not including the modern ones.

I remember how I came to get hold of my first record. It was a birthday present from my dad and it was Mozart's 35-41 vinyl. It was love at first sight, or should I say sound. I must have played it more than 10 times from morning to night, and for the next few days and weeks too. There was no turning back once I was bitten by the Classical bug. The hunt for my subsequent vinyls took me to running errands and doing chores for my family just to earn that extra penny or two and save whatever I could. It took me about 2 months of odd jobs, errands and chores before I could save enough for my next LP but the end result was satisfying.

These days, there are just so many outlets for music. Lps have long become the only medium for the purists, such as me. CDs have been the new fad for a long time and music is available all over the net. My grandson keeps telling me how he gets his music for free and they are all the latest ones as well. For me, it just isn't the same. There is no comparison between the quality of sound from a vinyl record and that from a CD. Sure, it might lose out in terms of taking up space, but the sound from a LP will always be more 'real' than that of the ‘mechanical’ CD.