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recording? I thought about this quite a bit after reading this post. I then went to the Erato site to have a listen, I heard all of the available sample tracks. Yes, it is good quite good from what I heard, but I have numerous versions of this from the Alban Berg, Amadeus, Lasalle and my favourite the Melos Quartet with Rostropovich, so why this one? It raises another broader question, namely, how many more Brahms Requiems do we need to record or Beethoven Ninths? Years ago Bernstein recorded Tchaikovsky's 6th at such a slow pace that his approach brought a new interpretation to the score that I had never heard before, likewise Carlos Kleiber recorded Beethoven's 4th at such a brisk pace that it totally changed the way I now judge a performance of it. Those recordings I gladly purchased, aside from the lieder on this recording will my appreciation of this music change or be altered in any way? Doubt it, which is why I now only buy recordings of the old masters, only if the interpretation is transformative that it completely reverses the way I hear the piece, which these days is rare. So if you already have Gulini's or Klemperer's Brahms Requiem or Dutoit or Karajan's Planets or Fricsay's, Karajan's or Szell's 9th no need to buy another.
I recently purchased a double LP set of Max Richter's recomposition of Vivaldi's 4 seasons of which I have countless recordings. The passion to hear the seasons had waned over the years but this recording has re-ignited the passion to listen to the original composition again. This is what modern classical should be doing in my opinion, not spewing out the same old masters to shore up a tired old catalogue, but of course to each his own.