The other four recordings feature Pierre Monteux, whose performance of the Brahms Second Symphony at Tangelwood in 1961 hooked my 14-year-old self on classical music. They are: the complete Daphnis and Chloe; all three Debussy Nocturnes (oddly coupled with Mendelssohn's incidental music for A Midsummer Night's Dream), the Beethoven Pastoral symphony, and Dvorak's 7th, along with "My Home." The performances are of course known to be distinguished, but the sound! Wow! My previous favorite Dvorak 7th was Christoph von Dohnanyi's with the Cleveland Orchestra, in excellent digital sound, rather like George Szell's but with a little more humane give-and-take in the phrasing. I can honestly say that the sound is not just as good as, but better than, the Dohnanyi recording. The same can be said for the others, especially the Ravel, which runs the gamut from orgiastic abnandon to the utmost delicacy. No recording can quite reproduce a live performande. But with these four, I could close my eyes and almost forget that I was in my living room listening to a recording made half a century ago rather than a live performance.
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