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Yes, you have all of them, in superb 192 kbps!!

Hi Melwig,

Yeah, it's impossible to narrow it down to one, or even just a few. If you like recital recordings, however, Sviatoslav Richter's Sofia Recital from 1958 is available on iTunes and a recording I consider pretty essential for collectors of piano music, although the sound quality is rather poor and there is a significant amount of audience noise. The performance, one of the most super-charged ever captured on tape, renders all these caveats moot.

Cheers!

My CD collection once consisted of five discs:

Horowitz at the Met
Ashkenazy - Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto #2 and Paganini Rhapsody with London/Previn
Glenn Gould Goldberg Variations
Lilya Zilberstein - Rachmaninoff Preludes Op. 32 and Shostakovich 1st Sonata
Pollini - Chopin Etudes

Now that my iTunes library has over 15,000 tracks. I still go back to those five albums for inspiration.

Three favorites:

Pollini's recording of Stravinsky's Trois Mouvements de Petrouchka and the Prokofiev Seventh Sonata; Firkusny's recording of Pictures at an Exhibition; and Pogorelich's recording of Gaspard de la Nuit.

All on DG.

Anyone else experience shock and awe at Pogorelich playing the Brahms Op. 79 Rhapsodies!? (1992)
Absolutely riveting and I could not believe what I was hearing. I've known about the album for quite some time but I had basically written it off as ridiculous for all this time. For some reason I decided to listen to the Op. 79 and was dumbfounded. Please give it a serious listen and decide for yourself.

Both pieces, I think, are so imaginative and unorthodox that they lend to a great deal of interpretive freedom as is displayed here. Especially the first, I'm not sure how so many pianists end up sounding the same in a composition like this. The album is also benefited by superb sound quality. Here it is on Youtube (no I don't own the album).

http://youtu.be/ZJrkefO17Qo

The CD most dear to me is Andre Laplante playing Ravel (the one with Miroirs).

+1 for Spotify.


Spotify streams up to ~320 kbps for their subscribers. The difference between 320 kbps and lossless is typically entirely negligible, but not always.

A little off-topic...spotify's free service is fine for popular music. However, I really despise having advertisements play between movements. I've never actually tried the Spotify premium trial...is the sound difference noticeable between ~320 kbps and 192 kbps?

It depends on what speakers/headphones you're using, as well as the mastering of the track itself, but generally you will notice the difference between 320 kbps and 192 kbps. With headphones of any caliber, you will definitely notice the difference.

I never listened to Spotify without a subscription. So I'm not sure whether it sounds ok or not. I've never had to tolerate an advertisement. That would be annoying. I stopped listening to Pandora for several reasons, but ads were one of them.

Anyway, as to the overall quality of the music, I do know that if I'm not in front of a live performance, I can tolerate a certain amount of hit in overall fidelity. Heck, I can listen to those old recordings in which the fidelity is not so great, with audible hiss and tinny sound, and still be blissfully transported. A magical performance always shines through.

That being said, I do like listening to things the best I can, so I have a really terrific set of over-the-ear headphones that I bought last year (in part based on some user recommendations here) that make the most of whatever it is I'm listening to.

On the other hand, me, my iphone, and some cheap earbuds are still enough to keep me happy if it's some music I want and I've got the opportunity.

Overall, I'm getting a pretty good experience, and also get the convenience of having an enormous catalog at my fingertips at all times.

Dunno why this one pops into my mind; maybe it was the most formative for me. On first listen I thought "What the heck was that? it doesn't even sound like music." I went on to become utterly fascinated with Brahms and probably have listened to this album nearly a bazillion times.

My favourite is Andre Previn playing Grieg with Morecambe and Wise ... they even try to contact Edvard skiing in Norway ...
but then, I'm a loon ... regards, btb ... lighten up chaps!

My first Horowitz album.



And my favorite Horowitz album.