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First Classical music you ever bought?

I'd forgotten all about the Britannia Music Club. I was sucked in by its opening offer but afterwards forgot to cancel the quarterly disc which they sent you if you didn't order something else.... They got fed up with me sending stuff back and cancelled my membership! However it did lead to some accidental discoveries e.g. Brendel's Schubert D.960 which turned me on to Schubert's piano music.
 
first for me iirc was rossini - william tell overture. that was followed by a 'classics for pleasure' : beethoven‎– symphony #6 - ( pastoral, just in case you don't know ;) ) , andré cluytens, berlin philharmonic. i loved it then. and loved it the last time i had my turntable out and played it.

...was about 8 at the time.
 
Racking my brains I honestly cannot remember my first LP, it would have been played on a 1950s mono radiogram. At the time I was playing violin in the school orchestra, mainly Haydn and Handel. I then went into a pop, blues, jazz trip and started taping Ligeti and Stockhausen from Radio 3. Then saw A Clockwork Orange and went for a big box of Klemperer Ludwig Van. Then Mahler and Shostakovich then......
 
I'd forgotten all about the Britannia Music Club. I was sucked in by its opening offer but afterwards forgot to cancel the quarterly disc which they sent you if you didn't order something else.... They got fed up with me sending stuff back and cancelled my membership!

They did that with me too - I`d stopped buying stuff because I`d taken out a second membership in my Mothers name to blag the Solti Ring introductory offer - a move I`ve never regretted.
 
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Probably Sibelius 5, (maybe with Anthony Collins?) back in the early seventies. Mahler, Britten, Bruckner and Shostakovich followed in rapid succession.

That was the start of a long and highly rewarding journey, still being filled with interest and delight as Ades, Gubaidulina, Ligetti and Boulez et al come into my line of hearing to complement a current staple diet of Beethoven, Bach and Shostakovich.
 
Grieg's Peer Gynt suite when I was around 9 or 10. The first suite used to be occasionally played as part of the school assembly and I fell inlove with it.
 
I signed up to one of those record club things as a student where you got a couple of discounted albums then bought one a month. I can vaguely see Andrew Davies on the cover of a Dvorak Symphony No.8 recording. I also bought a lot of DG Karajan recordings from this amazing place in Edinburgh-

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Thin

My first independent purchase might have been Karajan, BPO, The Brandenburgs (I know, don’t laugh, that’s what folk did in 1982).
 
I’d won’t laugh, I have a double album of Handel concerti grossi by Karajan. Bought from Comet in the days when they sold LPs. Probably not played in 40 years.
 
I'd forgotten all about the Britannia Music Club.

Oh yes, so had I, but now the memories come flooding back - wafer thin warped vinyl on the cheap, but definitely the source of my first classical purchases. My introduction to classical was school music lessons & the only way the teacher could keep our attention for more than a few minutes was by playing Tchaikovsky's 1812 overture.
 
This must be close to the first-

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It’s still a first class interpretation and who’d have thought? The Music For Pleasure label.
 
That Allegri Misere; what a wonderful first purchase, and also Giulini's Beethoven. It took me ages to work back to find such treasures; but then I do tend to do things arse about face!
 
I was 11, it was not my purchase but a friends who bought "The Children's Guide to the Orchestra' and brought it along to our musical appreciation period at school. This impressed me in more ways than one, he liked this music that wasn't Pop and he could afford to buy it! It set me on a lifetime love of the complexities and expression in classical music. This had the side affect at the time of giving more meaning to the soundtrack of movies I used to go to in those days. Hi Ho Silver!

My friend was also a wizz at making crystal sets. :)

Mr ED
 
This:
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thanks to 2001: a space odyssey. Like everyone else, I knew the basic tune of The Blue Danube, but was totally blown away by exposure to the whole thing.


If there's a more brilliant fitting of music to images, I have yet to find it.
 
This must be close to the first-

1179pms.jpg


It’s still a first class interpretation and who’d have thought? The Music For Pleasure label.

Classics for Pleasure had some very good releases, a mixture of re-releases and original recordings. They released some Bach (Brandenburgs, violin concertos) that I really enjoyed, then there was the Cluytens Beethoven cycle.
 
St Matthew Passion. My first cd set:

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I was 12 and my organ teacher brought me to a performance of the St Matthew Passion. I had to have the cd set. I made copies of the chorals on cassette for classmates of me. Looking backwards they must have considered me a quite strange guy.

I can say that attending the concert was an important point in my life. Later, I studied and completed a degree in churchmusic.
 
Another one for Grieg's Peer Gynt suite. Followed by The Planets (can't remember the conductor)
Then Elgar variations. I think we went Mozart crazy after that, one of my kids was born to a Mozart piano concerto...
 
Glenn Gould's 1981 Goldberg Variations on lp, after a mate had taped it for me. Started me listening to solo piano music, remember a Horowitz Columbia set which had Schumann's Kindeszenen on it. Getting a copy of the Penguin Guide helped me find my way around how the history fitted together and prompted a lot of purchases.

Edinburgh in the 80s a good time to be buying secondhand classical vinyl as the city's well-heeled music lovers were converting to CD. Spent quite a few hours in a tiny shop called Aria Records on Dundas St, whch never had a massive stock but was run by a lovely old couple. They also cleaned all their records, so the place had this aroma of cleaning fluid the minute you walked in. Long gone now, needless to say....
 
Edinburgh in the 80s a good time to be buying secondhand classical vinyl as the city's well-heeled music lovers were converting to CD.

There used to be a similar shop in central Manchester called Gibbs. Second hand full price LPs were £2.99/3.99. I bought a lot from them.
 


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