On this question, we are simply never going back to the days of the celebrated record producers like Culshaw, Legge etc and that's that. In my experience, a great recording of a 'classical' piece, like a great jazz performance, is a matter of luck, combined with what the conductor had for breakfast, whether the tympanist is double-parked, how long since the leader had a fight with his wife, and a lot of other absolutely unquantifiable things. Two of my favorite recordings are Horenstein's Tchaikovsky 5th and his Bruckner's 9th on BBC Legends, one studio and one live, and equally incandescent, in my opinion; another is Andre Previn's recording of Shapero's Symphony for a Classical Orchestra, recorded in concert: if it had had to be recorded in a studio I would not have it at all. A recording I bought partly on Dave Hurwitz's recommendation is a George Szell Cleveland set (Sib 2, Mozart 40, Weber overture) recorded live in Tokyo, and he was right: it's terrific. I thank my lucky stars that today's technology allows good live recordings to be made; if it had always been thus, since 1925 or so, the whole complicated, expensive business of assembling symphony orchestras in recording studios might never have become the norm in the first place. Donald Clarke *********************************************** The CLASSICAL mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's HDMail High Deliverability Mailer for reliable, lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html