Grade 1 Violin

  I read recently that the young Celibidache hid in a toilet overnight at the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth so he could witness de Sabata rehearsing Tristan the following day,    

  Last night I dreamt someone had commissioned me to write a piece for an upmarket magazine on my recommendations for recordings readers might add to their collections. On waking up it seemed so real I couldn't tell if it was genuine or not so I began listing all the recordings I have found essential to my mind by composer from A - Z. In no way is this meant to be a 'building a library' kind of survey; just recordings I couldn't live without. I wrote a little Forward: People have described studio recordings as Electronic Music. I think there is some truth in that. Recordings of live performances are fundamentally different. They are witnesses to an event whereas studio recordings are an attempt to re-create a live event without any blemishes or imperfections. They also tend to take place in fundamentally different acoustics and so lack atmosphere. It is hard to re-create the atmosphere and excitement of a live performance in the studio and many studio recordings turn ou...