I've maintained Biggs back recordings since my twenties also - they are now
CDs so I doubt I'll ever have to replace them again. But I also like the
firey and erratic Virgil Fox, Marie Clair Alain, and a few others - yeah
I've got a lot of Bach organ stuff around.
I came up with Night on Bald Mountain and Rites of Spring from
Fantasia -- didn't know the titles but over time figured them out and got
the records. This was before Bach was played on classical radio, and the
Bach in Fantasia was that dead awful orchestration - it still sets my teeth
on edge.
Until a fire got it in 1978 I held on to my very first classical record. I
found it in the attic when I was about five - In a Persian Garden played on
the Mighty Wirlitzer of Radio City - a twelve inch seventy-eight. Later I
became the kid to givve your old 78s too among my family and in my
neighbourhood. I had albums of stuff like Act II of Rigoletto -- that was
several 12 inch disks! One apparently bought Operas one act at a time. My
first Beethovan's 9th was on about 8 or so records but a few were broke when
I got it.
Along with classical I got into Swing, Dixieland, Torch Singers, and
Boogie Woogie - to say nothing of oddities like the Bell Sisters and Larry
Vincent. The Gene Autrys I got went to my brother who was into them.
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Post by Frank R.A.J. MaloneyPost by Calvin Rice... I think my favourite is the movie that got me into Bach at a very young
age "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea". ...
The movie that got me into both classical music and movie music at the same
time was 'Story of Three Loves' in 1953. The music was Rachmaninoff's
18th Variation from the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. Speaking of
Rachmaninoff, a great use of classical music in a movie was his Third Piano
Concerto, in the movie 'Shine'. That piece is part of the plot of the
movie, involved in the story's turning point.
For me it was a theatrical revival of _Fantasia_ in the 1956s that got me
started. I left the theater and went directly to the record store and bought
my first LPs -- themselves a fairly new format -- "Nutcracker Suite" (Arthur
Fielder, Boston Pops), "A Night on Bare Mountain", and Beethoven's Symphony
No. 6 "Pastoral". I just ignored the others.
(I didn't turn on to the Bach Toccata and Fugue until I was a moody college
student and discovered E. Power Biggs.)
--
Frank in Seattle
___________
Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney
"I leave you now in radiant contentment"
-- "Whistling in the Dark"