Chris Bonds: >I guess I prefer the "old" Celi to the young firebrand. So do I. But the set of Brahms symphonies that he recorded with the Stuttgart Radio Symphony in the mid-70s is very good indeed. He must have drilled that orchestra comatose to get the result he did. (Incidentally, the set includes a full side of Celi rehearsing the 4th, in addition to the performance of the same work in concert.) It's a Deutsche Grammophon production that came out fairly recently. Compared to it, his Munich Philharmonic Bruckner (almost-) set, EMI, which trickled together about a half-generation later, is better still. For my taste, Celibidache along with Horenstein are the most persuasive Bruckner interpreters of the LP/cd period--though Bruno Walter and Furtwaengler, both of them of the preceding conducting generation, probably deserve not just respect, but even awe. Denis Fodor Internet:[log in to unmask]