Tom Connor: >I can't help but be impressed at the number of recordings recommended on >this list that are over 20 or so years old. If the stereo age began in, >oh say 1958, its just over 40 years old. I bet most of the recordings I >see recommended here are pre 1978. (Except of course, Brendel playing >Beethoven Sonatas.) Is there a difference in the performers between these >2 periods. When I first started reading Gramophone in the 60s, I was frequently irritated when a reviewer would write of, for example, a new record of a Sibelius symphony and more often than not, compare it unfavourably with Kajanus, whose recordings were unavailable at the time. I found it hard to understand how someone could prefer a scratchy old 1930s recording to a stereo LP. Now, of course, with over forty years of collecting behind me, I do the same myself and hanker after the recordings I loved - and in many cases, still do - when I was young, and still use many of these, or the memory of them, as benchmarks for new ones. I suspect that a fair percentage of MCML contributors are of similar vintage which might explain why recordings from 20+ years ago tend to feature in recommendations. Of course, it also suggests that by and large, things *were* better then! Richard Pennycuick [log in to unmask]