Building A Chamber Music Collection in 1953 (The "A" List)

[@pauldavidartistclub6723]

As a book lover and former proprietor of a used book store, I’m loving this series. If you have more such books I for one would enjoy your presentation of them…or even just delving into passages or reviews you agree ir take issue with from other old review books

[@heatherharrison264]

I have been enjoying this series and its reminder of those scratchy early 1950s hard plastic LPs that I used to dig up at the thrift stores and record stores. I wonder if there are other books like this that are even older. It would be interesting to see what the recommendations would have been in the 1930s, for example, when people had to buy huge albums of brittle shellac 78s in order to acquire works that would later fit on a single LP.

[@bbailey7818]

I would recommend David Hall's "The Record Book" which went through multiple editons and his 1950 Records which dealt with very early lp (and opined that lps could never exceed 10000 cycles in frequency range.) Also Irving Kolodin's guides to Music on Records, the most interesting being the 1940 edition which was prompted by the classical premium disc price cut from $2 to $1 a disc which stimulated a huge jump in affordability and sales; and the 1950 edition. The 1947 edition is much less interesting because classical catalogues had been decimated by the record companies due to wartime rationing and had not yet been rebuilt. Kolodin is decidedly opinionated, and not infrequently wrong, but that only makes it more fun. What must have been terribly frustrating for music lovers was that much of the rep that had been recorded, like the complete Beethoven piano sonatas, and the Pro Arte series of Haydn Quartets, were made as Society Sets and if you missed the boat at the beginning you were simply out of luck acquiring many desirable recordings. You would have to wait for the lp to be invented.

[@jdistler2]

I think that the recommendations were limited to US releases available at that time. The local branches of European Decca and DG had a wider range chamber repertoire in their catalogs, but very few of these came out on the American market.

[@dmntuba]

1953 is back👍

[@kentrobertshaw7805]

No Debussy Cello Sonata?

[@robertdandre94101]

thank you for this series....by the way, will the cover of your book last until the end of this series....?