Recently, I bought a new belt for my seldom-used turntable.  There's also
an apparent conspiracy by some distributors not to supply my favourite CD
shop - and Billy's - with the CDs I have on order.  Thus, for a change,
I've been digging in my LPs:

Rosenberg's Symphony #2 on Turnabout conducted by Herbert Blomstedt,
recorded in the 60s.  I got to know this really well and could even
remember where some of the surface noise is.  I've heard a couple of his
other seven symphonies and like them very much.  Nobody seems to have
recorded any for many years.  Robert von Bahr, where are you when we need
you? Some of them need choirs but that didn't stop him with the Holmboe
symphonies.  He could even give Blomstedt the gig.

Andrey Balanchivadze's Symphony #2.  An old MK LP that's in surprisingly
good fettle, attractive middle-Soviet music.  Cover notes were never MK's
forte - they were even coy about telling you first names.  I discovered in
Grove that Balanchivadze's brother emigrated and became better known as
George Balanchine.

Bruckner's Symphony in F Minor (aka #00).  It occurs to me that younger
members of the list - say <35 - probably don't own any LPs, or a turntable.
They assume perhaps that the cornucopia of music we take for granted is a
common experience for all of us.  I remember a postman I knew years ago
who was into Bruckner, but some of the symphonies were only available on
obscure labels whose acquisition required the patience of Job, and others
were not available at all.  There was, I recall, just one recording of
Mahler's 8th, recorded at a festival in Holland and all but unobtainable.

Sometimes, I feel old!

Richard Pennycuick
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