Editing Your Collection - How?
Wed, Feb 2 2011, 12:00PM
#2
RE: Editing Your Collection - How?
Agreed, I can understand why this stuff didn´t get released at the time, due to the sheer amount of stuff recorded especially in the 50´s and 60´s, I have a Jackie McLean and a Coltrane LP recorded on the same day in ´62, but there´s no excuse now. I think they now it will sell, but they want to keep it up their sleeves and release it dribble by dribble, so they can squeeze as much money out of us as they can.
Wed, Feb 2 2011, 1:45PM
#3
RE: Editing Your Collection - How?
Tagalie raises some interesting points, notably reluctance to junk a disliked recording given the possibility of 'coming round' to it later. I've experienced this - has anyone else, and what are your timeframes between auditions? Perhaps that's a fallacy, as I find it can be weeks or years.
On completism: I've been hindered by a feeling that I should keep things that I wouldn't necessarily enjoy in case I come to need them. For example, the complete Leclair string sonatas - a certain London ensemble seems to programme a lot of Leclair (and ask me for programme notes) which then warrants me keeping the set. This feeling can spread like a disease: "I can't get rid of those Stamitz symphonies just in case..."
But of particular interest is Tagalie's point on the characteristics of collectors. I agree that the attraction of a collection of recorded music is that it aspires towards an unattainable goal. Is it fuelled by the fact that there seems to be no let-up in the issuing of new recordings, which can often still prove 'shocking' as Tagalie suggests?
It's that latter fact - combined with the assumption that we all have limited storage space and some sort of disposable income (irrespective of class, I might add) - which suggests editing our collections is something we all have to do!
Wed, Feb 2 2011, 4:30PM
#4
RE: Editing Your Collection - How?
It's that latter fact - combined with the assumption that we all have limited storage space
Well, as I may have hinted above, that's not exactly true anymore...
Wed, Feb 2 2011, 5:43PM
#5
RE: Editing Your Collection - How?
Dubrob wrote Am I alone in having bought records and actually hiding them from the wife, because if she found them there´s no way I could justify buying ¨more bloody records¨?
Me too Dubrob CD's and cycling stuff. At least with downloads 'her indoors' can't see what's going on - ha ha.
Although I had nowhere near the amount of discs Andrew has I sold ALL of my CD's in job lots of 100's and am now really enjoying re-spending the money on downloads and the odd selected CD's. I found that some discs hadn't been played for years so what's the point of hanging on to them when someone else could be enjoying them?
I too enjoy having the CD and booklet but I have to say there is so much info out there in the interweb that you can research any piece of music and composer/musician.
A half decent hi fi gives a pretty good sound reproduction for streaming through Spotify etc.
Wed, Feb 2 2011, 5:46PM
#6
RE: Editing Your Collection - How?
Good point Martin - though there are still some limits when storing music on hard drives aren't there?
I do actually rip a lot of music in preparation for uploading it onto my iPod. But my reluctance to pin my colours to electronic storage and purchasing comes from my attachment to all things physical about the CD and player as hinted at above.
There are some things you can't replicate, and the feeling of a product in your hand - for example, a CSO Resound CD with the original Chicago-commissioned programme notes, sponsor credits and player list - that's entierly unreplicable (is that a word?). Not to mention slipping it into your player.
It's a bit like not getting old-school flight tickets issued in wallets any more...
Wed, Feb 2 2011, 7:54PM
#7
RE: Editing Your Collection - How?
Dubrob, my personal experiences are very similar to yours - in fact I *still* tape from the radio (well, the modern equivalent). Nearly everyone on here has clearly got quite a bit of spare cash - if they had to work two hours on the minimum wage to buy a typical CD, they wouldn't be wondering about this version against that version of a work - they'd get what they could beg,steal or borrow and like it. But that's obviously not the case - and that's what I call middle-class...
Naturally it's better to spend your money on a CD of good music than it is to waste it on a car or mortgage or foreign holiday or nightly expensive bottle of wine - but my hunch is that nearly all posters do both...
Wed, Feb 2 2011, 10:00PM
#8
RE: Editing Your Collection - How?
Fair enough Wigmaker, and your hunch may well be right. I have never been in the position to afford the entire Chandos discography, nor want 23 versions of Beethoven´s Piano Concertos for example. Saying that I lost the rag years ago with friends, family or neighbours moaning about not having any money, but yet they were somehow mysteriously able to spend every night down the boozer, and smoke 20 or more a day. My point is that for every working person there is always an amount of choice in how your money disappears.
Thu, Feb 3 2011, 10:06AM
#9
RE: Editing Your Collection - How?
Andrew: I could certainly live without needing to slip the CD into the player, but I agree that when effort is put into creating beautifully produced physical products, it can be an important part of the experience. I could cite Alia Vox's historic explorations here, with their high quality image reproductions, or the recent Arvo Pärt "Tabula rasa" special edition set on ECM (though I'm actually an admirer of ECM's aesthectic approach generally). I also remember buying the original issue of the Harnoncourt St Matthew Passion about a decade ago - such things stick in the mind.
Richypike: I fear we may have a shared joint obsession here with music and cycling. If forum members won't consider it too off-topic, do feel free to expand at some point...
Thu, Feb 3 2011, 11:29AM
#10
RE: Editing Your Collection - How?
Encouraged by all your thoughts, I had a hearty collection-editing session last night.
It threw up a classic dilemma. Peter Oundjian's live recording of the Enigma Variations with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra on the ensemble's own label: not your finest interpretation, but aesthetically unique - conveying the sound of the orchestra (suggesting what the RSNO might be in for...) acoustic of its home, and with obvious home-led design.
Needless to say, I granted it a temporary reprieve.
But just to focus the argument again - it strikes me there's one central question for every collection-editor that's emerging from all this:
Is it more important to have a large number of recordings of pieces you cherish, or to sacrifice multiple 'versions' in favour of a larger range of repertoire?
Personally I am still grappling with this. What are your thoughts?
Thu, Feb 3 2011, 11:42AM
#11
RE: Editing Your Collection - How?
A lot of folk i know in their middle years like to keep the music of their youth as some sort of nostalgic memento regardless of whether they actually listen to the stuff or not. Then again with most of them their tastes dont seem to've changed. Not me though. Every few months I'll go through my collection and stuff I havent listened to for a couple of years and more goes onto Amazon. Over the last ten years that's amounted to over 700 CDs, mostly rock and dance music that don't do it for me anymore.
As a relative CM newbie I'm only building up a collection and am getting several seminal versions of major orchestral works by LvB, Dvorak, Brahms, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, Berlioz and Schumann. Some sets like the Mendelssohn/Abbado, LvB/Barenboim and Dvorak/Kertesz sets are minimally and neatly packaged and easy to store. With clunky, overpackaged box sets like the LvB/Zinman, Brahms/Sanderling and LvB/Norrington I just stick the CDs and inserts into plastic slips. As I really like these no way am I getting shot of them though.
Thu, Feb 3 2011, 8:01PM
#12
RE: Editing Your Collection - How?
For me Andrew it will always be repertoire, there are still works that I want to hear that I have never found, or never been recorded. I don´t have have more than two or three versions of anything. As Tagalie and Martin_opera have mentioned before, when, where, how, in what state of mind you are, what you have or haven´t heard before greatly influence your experience of a piece of music, so that listening to the same recording over many years can feel like a new experience all the time. Also personally, with rare exception, I´ve almost never heard a version of a piece of music that was better than the one I first heard and fell in love with. I know there´s more personal psychology than always choosing the best recording first up in this. For example I can´t imagine anyone playing Sibelius better than Colin Davis, in fact I´m almost afraid to hear anyone else play this music, because I´m so attached to his version that hearing other versions will tarnish forever the unique atmosplete of those recordings. Atmosphere for me is the key word, all great recordings create a unque atmosphere, Radu Lupu´s Schubert, Mravinsky´s Pathetique, Side B of Bringing it all Back Home; Side A of MY Favourite Things, when you have lived in this atmosphere, you don´t want anything else to touch it.
Thu, Feb 3 2011, 8:17PM
#13
RE: Editing Your Collection - How?
Richypike: I fear we may have a shared joint obsession here with music and cycling. If forum members won't consider it too off-topic, do feel free to expand at some point...
Hey Martin don't get me started with cycling talk... road and mountain bike and doing my first duathlon in Sept. Trek road bike and Charge single speed mountain bike - plus others in various degrees of disrepair. North Essex has great quiet roads and tracks to explore.
richypike@gmail.com if you fancy a ride :)
Fri, Feb 4 2011, 2:13PM
#14
RE: Editing Your Collection - How?
The North and South Downs areas are more my riding ground (plus, of course, Gramophone's local, Richmond Park), but if I find myself in the North Essex I shall get in touch, thanks! And for the record, Specialized road and mountain bikes (with gears I hasten to add - a single speed mountain bike, that's quite eccentric, though I dare say easier to maintain…).
But, back to topic, welcome back everyone…Once you've edited your collection, how do you organise it? I'm afraid to admit I don't follow Gramophone's divisions, but instead order them by Early/Medieval, Baroque, Classical, Romantic to early 20th century, Contemporary. And yes, I'm aware that the borderlines are often very hazy, but the only person who needs to know where everything can be found is me. That said, my guitar recordings, of all eras, all sit together in one place. How do you order your collections?
Fri, Feb 4 2011, 4:32PM
#15
RE: Editing Your Collection - How?
Martin you're going to regret asking that...at least with my answer:
I store jewel cases by country of composer. I use ten x 10ft floating 'box' shelves, so when you look at them straight on you're seeing a sort of rectangle which is slightly wider than it is tall.
I like to think when you step back and look at this wall of discs, you can visualise some sort of map - a map that takes its reference points both from geography and tradition. So, Austria, Germany and Russia are at the centre; Iberia and Latin America are at the bottom; America, Canada and the far east are at the top. France, UK/Ireland, the Nordic countries, Eastern Europe etc fit round that.
It's organised in a linear sense snaking through the shelves l-r, but so that countries are next to one another for a reason. I'd love to list the actual progression of countries (wouldn't you all be just fascinated?) but can't remember it in detail - you'd think it pretty logical and obvious, though.
Composers are then listed alphabetically within their country.
Clamshells...well, they're in the study!
Philip I´m reminded of my favourite primary school teacher, who whilst puffing on his pipe used often to mutter, skulduggery, duplicity, and collusion.
None of us are forced to buy anyhting, but the record companies know what we are like.
Thanks for the memories!
Of course no one is forced to buy anything - but you can't buy what record companies refuse to release. Apologies for harping on about Dave Brubeck (I'm writing a book about him, so he's very much in my thoughts at present) - but I've long suspected that if Sony were to reissue his late '60s albums with Gerry Mulligan (which, apart from the live Berlin album, have never been on CD), a wider audience could rediscover a side of Brubeck that continual reissues of Time Out et al hide. By sitting on this material (presumably because they think it won't sell enough) the richness and evolution of Brubeck's career gets skewed. Which I think is a real pity.