My first LP record:

Mahler 4 (Concertgebouw Orchestra, Haitink, Alexander)

I still have this standing on my desk in my mancave, next to the laptop.

My first CD (switched quickly to the then new format)

Schubert 8 (ASMF, Marriner)

Like 99.9%+ of my CD's it is still in my collection.

 

Art, that version of the Mahler 4th is the only version I have so far liked and which has actually touched me and made sense! Wonderful that it is your first album.

Of course as a classical pianist kid I had some piano music on record, but my first own purchase was in 1996, Sir Colin Davis, Sibelius symphonies cycle with the Bostoners, Philips. It was a true treasure, of course. I remember listening to the works and little by little getting to understand what was happening. Nevertheless, some symphonies I never understood through that cycle. But the 3rd and the 7th really clicked then.

(Until the age of 17 I had really been a rock and roll kid (despite playing the piano and singing in choirs). From a young age I used to play either keyboards or bass in a band and sing. My first compositions other than on piano were for my grunge band in 1991. It was all Nirvana Nevermind, 70´s Alice Cooper or 70´s Queen rip-offs. It is wonderful that on this forum there truly are people like me who do not have just one musical path and who know that both worlds can coexist.)

 

I was always interested in classical music, but it wasn't my main passion until I heard a radio recital with Satie's 5th Gnossienne as an encore. It was so interesting that the next day I went to Tower Records and picked this up. That sparked an interest in Satie, which branched out into Webern, Obrecht, and Beethoven, and then everyone else, and now I've ended up with stacks and stacks of CDs squirreled around my house.

I should have bought golf clubs instead.

 

Yes, have them all; my Sony Walkman (I discovered classical music through the walkman radio), cassettetapes and vinylrecords and cd's.

When I said (as a teenager) I like classical music, I got an old record player and a stack of records in my room. The first record I played made an immense impression. I still have that record (later also bought a better copy without scratches).

With my own money I bought my first two CDs.

I think this was my third CD. In a Reader's Digest I read an article about Perlman. Then I wanted a CD from him. Still a favorite in the collection.

At age 17 I bought my first opera

In 1997 I became a student and came to a big city. There were several CD shops with only classical music (I bought hundreds and hundreds of CDs there). There I could get the Philips/Decca/DG etc. catalogs for free. I could look in it for hours and hours .I still have these catalogs from 1997.

 

Yes, have them all; my Sony Walkman (I discovered classical music through the walkman radio), cassettetapes and vinylrecords.

When I said (as a teenager) I like classical music, I got an old record player and a stack of records in my room. The first record I played made an immense impression. I still have that record (later also bought a better copy without scratches).

This is a truly outstanding version of Beethoven's 3rd Piano Concerto, with Annie Fischer getting to the core of the music and Fricsay supporting her fully at every point, resulting in a reading that's full of Beethovenian fire, fervour and brilliance in the outer movements and serenity, repose and depth of feeling in the Largo.

 

Mendelssohn: Piano Trios
Emmanuel Ax, Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman

 

I suppose that, whilst this tipped me over the edge into serious listening, these below got me into listening to classical music in the first place. I wore out the cassettes and bought the CDs:

Edit: And yes, I still have them.

 

I do. A neighbor gave it to me 61 years ago. The label is "Stereo Fidelity" and featured the Hamburg Symphony Orchestra with a no-name conductor doing selections from Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty. I played that record every day on one of those cheap kid's record players. Every time I go thru the LP pile to get rid of stuff, I always take a fond look at that record knowing that this is where it all started. I'll never play it again; I'm sure the grooves are damaged severely. I have my first two CDs I bought. That was 38 years ago when I got my first CD player and then went to the store to get music: Vaclav Neumann on Denon with the New World Symphony and Maazel with Cleveland doing the Tchaikovsky 6th. (And the cd came from Japan - they misspelled it Cleverland.)

 

Do you still have your first album? Or remember what it was?

I sure do

I walked into a little record shop in New Hampshire and asked for something popular in classical. I had never listened to classical previous. I knew nothing about it. I was a junior in college. 1972. This is what he gave me.
And yes, I still own it.

 

Bought this on a cassette tape. The music (Sinfonia Concertante K364) was so glorious and full of melodic delights that it kept playing in my mind. Even though the version with Arthur Grumiaux/Arrigo Pelliccia/LSO/Sir Colin Davis later took over the place as my favourite version of the work, one always remembers one's first time.

 

Bought this on a cassette tape. The music (Sinfonia Concertante K364) was so glorious and full of melodic delights that it kept playing in my mind. Even though the version with Arthur Grumiaux/Arrigo Pelliccia/LSO/Sir Colin Davis later took over the place as my favourite version of the work, one always remembers one's first time.

I had this one also. Still do. It was among the first half dozen CDs that I acquired. K364 became my all time favorite work by my all time favorite composer.

 

I don't still have the 1969 LP, but I made a CD of it.

 

I don't still have the 1969 LP, but I made a CD of it.

Wow! Not what got me started in classical but I did the same thing with this recording. When I sold my LPs, I acquired a remastered CD version from "Pristine Classical". Great performance! It doesn't show above but the pianist was Abba Bogin.
What got me started in classical was Swan Lake with Ernest Ansermet on London. I do have a CD version.

 

That was an LP of Beethoven's violin concerto op.61, as recorded in 1973 by Henryk Szeryng with the Concertgebouw orchestra, conducted by Bernard Haitink. I still love that recording. My parents bought it, and I first heard it in 1979, when I was 9 years old.
Sadly, all my LP's were done away with during the move to where I now live, 15 years ago. It's now MP3 all the way...

 

Sadly, all my LP's were done away with during the move

It was a mercy, to put them out of their misery.

 

I think for me it was more playing classical guitar that got me hooked. I just love the feel of the nylon strings, I guess. I had to minor in classical performance at music school, so it was really my teachers and the friends I made that instilled the love of classical music in me.

so I was already in love before I started buying records

 

This one started it all, it was basically the only classical record in my dad's collection, by-catch from a book club.

 

...basically the only classical record in my dad's collection...

Well, if we're including our parents' records, this LP came out the same year I did. I grew up laying in front of a Klipschorn copy belting out the 30Hz notes.

 

Do you still have the actual album or recording that got you into classical music?

... Or remember what it was?

Yes, yes.
And it's a treasure.

It was in a required junior high school class -- Music Appreciation -- where I first heard Tchaikovsky's "Capriccio Italian". And then, only the closing section. It was from one of those 50 great classical moments discs that used to proliferate to expose folks to "classical" music. The class instructor played a couple of selections daily and talked about the composers and music in general. At the time I was pretty much hung up on becoming a rock-n-roll guitar player and AM radio listening fare, top 40, was my regular musical diet. Nothing previous from that compilation disc had made much of an impression till I heard the ending of the "Capriccio." I was never the same. It resonated.

I picked up this (now familiar and even ubiquitous) LP in response to my need to hear the Tchaikovsky again. The "1812 Overture" was a grand bonus. I played the disc on an old, small, low-fi record player, the kind that had two small detachable speakers hinged around the turntable, which opened up out of a suitcase-like package. Still, low fi or not, I was taken.

I not only still have this disc in my collection, I have some dozen or so additional copies, in both vinyl and CD, various pressings and reiterations, as well as other conductors and orchestras playing the Tchaikovsky piece. My classical music experience began with Tchaikovsky, and though it has expanded greatly, it never lost its center.

I treasure this disc and this music today, well over half a century later.

Somewhere during my later adult life I had opportunity to thank that music instructor for introducing me to this music. I suspect it may have been the only time in his experience that he had such a thank you.

 

Do you still have the actual album or recording that got you into classical music?

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[...]

Well, there were three pieces that I first encountered as a child (6-7). One was the UK version of the Dorati 1812 on an EP 45rpm...

It was my brother's, as was this version of The Planets Suite....

My parents had this Dvorak...

The first two classical albums I bought were in 1971 (I think...I was 12). The Peer Gynt I no longer have, but the Planets I still own.

 

I got into Classical music at a mini concert of Die Zauberflöte when i was four or five years old. Then i discovered Beethoven and the rest is history. Didn't discover Classical music with an album, if i did, i wish it would have been the Wagner Opera set by Solti.

 

I bought three Wagner 'bleeding chunk' albums on vinyl many years before I got into classical properly. I decommissioned my turntable nearly 30 years ago and the Wagner albums were either sold or given away. I've bought all my subsequent classical on CD - the first purchase was the 14-disc Solti Ring cycle on Decca from a mail order company who reduced it massively in price as an inducement to join up - this was in the late 1990s. The mail order company is long gone but the Solti Ring remains one of the jewels in my collection.

 

I used to have this very set. Stupidly sold it on Ebay a few years ago. I don't even have a CD player at the moment, but I wish I still had this box!

 

That 1997? remastering and beautiful re-packaging of the Solti Ring was probably by then my largests CM purchase. I waited for months until I found it for a good price and took a 45 min train ride (cheap or free for university students) to a larger city to buy it, and it was still around 170 German marks or so, I should remember precisely but I don't...

 

Yep.

 

It was one of these two, but it's been so long I can't remember which came first for me. (I was a bassoonist.)

 

I still have the recording which turned me off, and derailed my eventual discovery of classical. I went for the obvious and bought a Mozart Piano Concerto. I was already familiar with more sophisticated music by the likes of Yes, Kansas, and Emerson Lake & Palmer. This Mozart recording sounded cheesy and corny by comparison.

 

These were the first two albums I bought as a kid with my own money.
My dad was with me and he kind of pushed me to get the Karajan New World. I guess he payed for that one too, don't remember. But I very much prefered the Berlioz, and I still do.

 

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For me, it was this very cassette of The Rite of Spring.

I wasn't into CM at all, but back around 1986 or so, when I was about 15 years old, I went to the record store and found this huge bin of $1 cassettes. I bought $20 worth, at random, just to fill up this huge empty wall cassette rack that I had.

Over the next few weeks, I'd occasionally put one on while doing homework. I paid no attention to the music whatsoever...it was just background stuff.

But then one day I put this on, and everything changed. I had never heard anything like it.

I've held onto this very cassette for the last 35 years, through numerous moves, marriages, careers and kids. It sits with pride on my shelf. I can't remember the last time I actually listened to it, but I know I'll always hang onto it.

Do you still have your first album? Or remember what it was?

I wish I did but my Dad got rid of most of his LPs. If I still had the one he owned and I listened to, it would be the Scherchen St. Matthew Passion set.

 

I can't identify one recording as the first—I was younger than six years old—but I have and still listen to one of the first my mom played for me: Heifitz with the Boston Symphony under Munch playing the Prokofiev G minor Concerto and the Mendelssohn E minor. The others I remember from this age include Musorgsky Night on Bald Mountain, Grieg Peer Gynt suite, Peter and the Wolf, and the Nutcracker Suite. Might be why I identify so strongly with Russian music.

 

No. It was my fathers and he gave away all his LP's on a flea market several years ago.

 

I'm not being entirely accurate here, as I was first enthralled by The Rite of Spring as played by Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra in Disney's Fantasia at the age of four. (When Fantasia returned to the theaters in 1962, Stokowski's original 1948 performances were retained, thank goodness.) But this vinyl record in my father's collection did a lot to recreate the original power and excitement for me. Of course I still have that LP, which was the mono version, and as a record collecting adult picked up a stereo copy too.

 

Is it okay for me to chuckle, when somebody's "first record" was a CD from 1996? Cripes, by then I was already forty years into it.

 

I can't recall any particular first recording. What really got me into classical was my dad playing his recordings and the times when he would have a few friends over to play some chamber music; they were all amateurs but very good ones.

 

Same here exactly. Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann and Brahms. They would call this "The Repertoire" and nod knowingly at each other as if it was a secret code for Freemasons. My father would tell me what a shame it was that there was no repertoire for the flute, as if music didn't exist before 1775 and after 1890.