Thread: One Composer / One Recording

This may have been done before, but I'd like to start a thread wherein you can pick any composer, but you must choose just one recording to take to your "desert island" to represent him/her.

Play as many times as you want, but please only do one composer / one recording for each individual post.

I'll start it off:
WAGNER

$(KGrHqN,!lME6CWISze5BOjJ)NJr0w~~60_35.JPG

No vocal music here, unfortunately, but I'd still opt for this set personally if I had to take only one Wagner recording. (And, if you insist on making me take only one LP of the 3 in this set, it would be the one with the Overtures to Rienzi and The Flying Dutchman and the Faust Overture.)

Mahler

41lHxkVheAL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

MONTEVERDI

0.jpg

I was tempted to go with Book 5 - Madrigals, but I couldn't possibly leave out L'Orfeo.

Grieg

Originally Posted by kv466

Grieg

Rene Leibowitz? Oh, I gotta look this one up!

CHOPIN

0000908459_350.jpg

I think I'll take this for my Lizst, too.

It would have to be my current "obsession"

414QYXNKG3L._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Stockhausen Hymnen

ksce10.gif

Luckily there is no argument about differing performances as it is a wholly electronic piece and exists, therefore, in one version only.

Liszt's Sonata in B minor played by Vladimir Horowitz in 1930's -

BARBER

86011.jpg

My first Barber recording - still my favorite.

William Walton Symphonies LSO/LPO Charles Mackerras on CFP.Walton.jpg

Originally Posted by Vesteralen

... if you insist on making me take only one LP of the 3 in this set, it would be the one with the Overtures to Rienzi and The Flying Dutchman and the Faust Overture.

In order to keep this thread fresh, I'd strongly recommend limiting it to one LP/CD/Unit per composer- or it'll only be a matter of time before some wag suggests the Philips Complete Mozart Edition, or one of those 100+ CD Brilliant Edition boxes.

I have a number of favourite recordings of Schoenberg's music, but this one is always in the player. Pierrot Lunaire, the song-cycle Stravinsky called the solar plexus of Twentieth Century music, sung by Jane Manning with the Nash Ensemble under a young Simon Rattle back in the 1970's. On Chandos label, with Webern's Concerto as a filler. When I first heard it, I was shocked by this very vicious femme fatale, but in recent years I have grown to hear more of the subtleties of this masterpiece.

Without thinking too much:

Symphony No. 9 (Giulini) 1.jpg