Let’s be picky today:
Sometimes a recording is good but you won’t hear anything that a piece will offer.
Dave Hurwitz
Here’s Dave Hurwitz, the founder and Executive Editor of ClassicsToday.com talking about which is the best Rachmaninoff’s Symphonic Dances (Op. 45) recordings: he has a great beard and a cat backgrounded with thousands of recordings — I think his opinions counts
Hurwitz sugges ted not listening to Ormandy’s recording because he’s quite half-hearted there and the orchestra is just doing the homework. Fine:
This is my favourite version, Svetlanov conducting the state symphony orhcestra of Russian federation:
This is absolutely a smoker of a performance. This is some of his last recordings, it’s on canton classics, the sonics are astonishingly magnificent, and these are sort of slow, dark, heavy, pulverizingly powerful raw russian performances.