The other day I was assessing comparative digital recordings of Chopin’s Mazurka in B minor, Op 33 No 4, the pianists on my agenda being Jean-Marc Luisada, reissued in 2021 (RCA), and Peter Jablonski, released in 2022 (Ondine), the one unexpectedly slamming a thickened bass chord at the start of the lilting second section, the other just as stylish but more restrained. In an instant I was ferried back to the early 1960s and my hesitant though exciting attempts to approach classical music by borrowing old records. The contrasts in performances that I encountered back then were hardly less marked than the ones noted the other day. The intervening half-century or more has taught me that listening to old records is both musically nourishing and a priceless form of musical education. When initially encountered, they’re never old, only new, though of course the process is easily reversed, with certain new recordings making as much of an impact.

The Chopin of Dinu Lipatti (1917-50) – although wonderful – could not compare with that of Cortot (photography: Lebrecht Music Arts/Bridgeman Images)

First, though, let’s set down some ground rules. The appeal of vintage recordings should never be purely nostalgic, nor should it be a form of one-upmanship where the rarest acquisition scores highest on the envy chart. None of the foregoing matters. The principal draw with old records – meaning, in this context, shellac (78s), vinyl (LPs and EPs) and ‘analogues’ generally – is that they can present us with performances and repertoire that have mind-expanding potential. Discovery is what they’re about.

It all started with Chopin

The start of my own journey (as a skiffle loving Lonnie Donegan fan and classical music novice in 1960) was quite accidental. My musical grandfather had a quality radiogram and a living room sideboard stuffed with old records. One compartment had LPs, the other was piled high with 78s. On the vinyl side, I was drawn to a faded pink Columbia LP of Chopin’s waltzes played by someone with the exotic name Dinu Lipatti, a Romanian pianist about whom I knew nothing. I borrowed the record and played it repeatedly, relishing the music’s seductive mix of elegance, gaiety, sadness, eloquence and romance. As for the pianist, I couldn’t imagine a better way of interpreting these gorgeous, endlessly tuneful miniatures. In fact, the idea of ‘interpretation’ as such didn’t even occur to me.

Swiss-French pianist Alfred Cortot (1877-1962) – his Chopin interpretations are the stuff of genius … (photography: Photopress Archiv/Keystone/Bridgeman Images)

Next, I rifled through the 78s and found the Swiss-French pianist Alfred Cortot’s pre-war HMV set of the waltzes, took them home and could hardly believe that I was listening to the same music – here, exuberance, maximum flexibility and a unique singing quality seemed to elevate Chopin’s work to an entirely different plane. Lipatti’s interpretations were wonderful, but Cortot’s were the stuff of genius. Later on, I’d make similar discoveries via Artur Schnabel’s probing accounts of Beethoven’s piano sonatas (especially No 32 in C minor, Op 111), Ignaz Friedman bounding through selected Chopin mazurkas, Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, a peerless aristocrat, in Bach’s Chaconne arranged by Busoni and Brahms’s Paganini Variations, Benno Moiseiwitsch’s unbridled passion in Schumann’s Fantasie in C and very much more. It’s that level of quality we’re talking about, and because the history of recorded music goes back so far, these records are inevitably more richly represented than those from the last 40 years or so.

Wagner as action man

Wagner’s orchestral music was another early passion, the brief Prelude to Lohengrin’s third act a real thriller, especially as played at white heat by the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Arturo Toscanini. I was only a youngster at the time and still harboured an ambition to become a fighter pilot, and the Toscanini seemed like the soundtrack for a sleek Hawker Hunter jet noisily careering up the airfield runway preparing for take-off. I’d recently acquired a ‘second speaker’ for my modest record player set-up and craved a stereo version of the same music, perhaps as a birthday present. Thankfully, my obliging grandfather drove the two of us to a local record shop where I spotted the stereo Columbia LP ‘Klemperer Conducts Wagner’, noting with delight that the Act 3 Prelude was part of the programme. Well, if Toscanini’s Wagner was a jet-powered Hunter, Otto Klemperer’s (with a very able Philharmonia Orchestra) was a slowcoach Dakota helping to facilitate the then not-so-distant Berlin Airlift. What a let-down, though I later learnt to appreciate Klemperer’s more marmoreal Wagner style. Toscanini’s live 1941 account of Dawn from Götterdämmerung, with its lightning orchestral inflections and heroic declamations from singers Lauritz Melchior and Helen Traubel, was another miracle waiting to be heard, and it still thrills me to the core.

At around the same time, I began to appreciate how playing styles had evolved through the years: in the past, tending to accentuate drama and flexibility; in the present, having a more objective approach. Toscanini, in particular, cultivated a singing bel canto line while certain other conductors tweaked orchestration with an ear for how the music might sound in your living room, Leopold Stokowski being a prime example of the ‘recreative’ maestro. When I was a schoolboy, my French master latched on to my love of music, noting that I had discovered – and been swept up by – Stravinsky’s hard-driving, Neanderthal-style ballet The Rite of Spring, the nearest thing to rock music that the concert hall had to offer. In response, he kindly gave me his copy of Stravinsky’s puppet ballet Petrushka played by the Leopold Stokowski Symphony Orchestra, a fabulous if raw enactment of what is ultimately a tragic story, with raucous fanfares, circus-style drum rolls and orchestral soloists whose virtuosity defies belief. Many of today’s listeners might find this 1950 bombshell excessively confrontational (only Stokowski’s 1937 Philadelphia recording and Ernest Ansermet’s first Suisse Romande Orchestra version – Decca, 1950 – come close), but I urge you to try it.

Stokowski’s recordings with the Philadelphia Orchestra married tonal glamour to generous levels of intensity. My favourite one is of the conductor’s own cinematic orchestration of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition – slightly cut, it’s true, but infinitely more Russian-sounding than Ravel’s, especially on that particular Victor recording (1939). Other charismatic conductors who caught my attention included Sir John Barbirolli, Sir Thomas Beecham, Sergiu Celibidache, Albert Coates, Roger Désormière, Willem Mengelberg, Serge Koussevitzky, Yevgeny Mravinsky and, of course, Wilhelm Furtwängler, whose way with Wagner and the symphonies of Bruckner, Brahms and Beethoven (in particular) held me spellbound, and still does.

But there’s one set in particular that must count as very special: an electrifying account of Smetana’s patriotic set of tone poems Má vlast (‘My Fatherland’) performed live at the Prague National Theatre by an augmented Czech Philharmonic under Václav Talich on June 5, 1939, three months after the Nazis took over the city. The adrenalin rush that informs the fist-shaking close of ‘árka’ and the whole of ‘Blaník’ has an enthralling if energy-sapping effect. Each tone poem is tailed by wild applause, and at the end of ‘Blaník’, the massed shouts of approval suddenly transmute into nationalist music as the audience spontaneously bursts into the Czech national anthem, one of the most moving concert moments ever to be captured on disc.

Sung from the heart

Vocal revelations started with a 78 played on Alan Keith’s popular BBC series Your Hundred Best Tunes, which was broadcast every Sunday night. One particular programme unexpectedly ushered in a deep, grainy voice that I had never heard before, and would never forget: the Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin. Heartbreak is at the core of his theatrical singing of Massenet’s Élégie (now available on Marston’s wonderful Chaliapin set available at marstonrecords.com), where this great singer heightens the tragic mood at the song’s climax by projecting his voice to the other end of the studio, or so it sounds. I searched far and wide for the record (eventually finding a brand-new copy of the original 78 in an ancient local record shop!), but until then I hungrily relished what was at the time the only available LP of Chaliapin’s ‘electrical’ recordings, a Great Recordings of the Century disc that featured excerpts from a ‘live’ 1928 Covent Garden performance of Mussorgsky’s opera Boris Godunov, a key role for the singer. The breathtaking death scene was never far from my turntable from then on.

My growing love of notable singers from the past, whether electrically or acoustically recorded, was greatly encouraged by enthusiastic collector friends. The Irish tenor John McCormack, famed for his distinctive brogue, his diction and his breath control (and again celebrated by Marston: ‘John McCormack: A Patrician Artist’), became almost an obsession. Two versions (both 1927) of Crouch’s touching ballad Kathleen Mavourneen are illustrative of what I mean. The first, an unpublished take, is the smoother of the two, with McCormack’s singing approximating the style of an opera aria, excepting the tortured words ‘it may be for years, and it may be … forever’, where a sense of theatre takes over. For the marginally broader issued take, McCormack ups the tension with a more acute sense of vocal colour, more prominent accents; and as the narrative unfolds, so the emotion wells to fever pitch.

American soprano Rosa Ponselle (1897-1981) – Maria Callas was also a fan (photography: GRANGER – Historical Picture Archive/Alamy Stock Photo)

Then there was the Wagner school, with the Danish Heldentenor Lauritz Melchior and the German Heldensoprano Frida Leider in the love duet from Tristan und Isolde, Leider holding on for dear life to her heroic partner as protection from the sheer furore that Albert Coates draws from his orchestra. It’s true that later rivals also turn on the heat in this music, but even the best of them are tepid by comparison with Coates. Other unmissable vocal classics include the American soprano Rosa Ponselle, who is sublimity itself in ‘Casta diva’ from Bellini’s Norma (Maria Callas was a devoted Ponselle fan), and, of course, the whole run of Enrico Caruso recordings. To think that when I started collecting records in the early 1960s some of Caruso’s 78s were still in copyright. Jussi Björling’s uplifting ‘Nessun dorma’ (Warner Classics, RCA) is a world apart from Luciano Pavarotti’s (Decca), wonderful though that is: Nordic heroism as opposed to Italian heat.

Man and Huberman

Old violinists fascinated me, with my favourites including players like Jascha Heifetz (Spohr Violin Concerto No 8 – RCA, Naxos), Fritz Kreisler (Dohnányi’s Ruralia hungarica, RCA), Joseph Szigeti (Brahms’s Concerto under Sir Hamilton Harty), Adolf Busch (Schumann’s Violin Sonata No 1 with Rudolf Serkin, Warner Classics), Mischa Elman (Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto under Barbirolli, Warner Classics) and Yehudi Menuhin, all totally unalike. But perhaps my most profound recording discovery was when a friend put me onto a colleague who was eager to sell his 78s. I went to his north London home and was escorted upstairs, where a handsome record cabinet housed the small number of records he had put aside for sale. Among them was a blue-grey four-disc album – my heart still skips a beat when I think of it – of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto recorded in 1928 by the Polish violinist Bronisław Huberman with the Berlin Staatskapelle under William Steinberg. The only Huberman I’d previously encountered was a rather dull LP transfer of his classic Kreutzer Sonata recording with the great pianist Friedman. There the violin sound was veiled and indistinct. But the Tchaikovsky? I had no idea what to expect, neither in terms of performance nor in terms of sound. Well, when my stylus first hit those Columbia grooves I was dumbfounded.

After an affectionate orchestral introduction, Huberman enters, quietly at first, then swooping skywards on a prominent portamento before lilting through the main theme and settling on a fast, razor-sharp spiccato that will have the hairs on the back of your neck bristling. That and the way in which Huberman dances through the finale’s polonaise-like section settled my judgement (I was around 20 at the time): it was one of the most compelling, certainly the most individual, Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto recordings ever made, but it wasn’t available. The sound, too, was amazing for its years. So I cooked up a cunning plan to establish a one-man record label (Melos) with the express intention of issuing it – the catalogue number, RC101.

The transfer (achieved via my trusty old Ferrograph tape machine and a couple of razor blades) was my own – the coupling, a wild and blustery account of Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole in which Huberman is supported by George Szell and the Vienna Philharmonic (Huberman’s favourite among his recordings, apparently). Once I had the discs in my mitts, I traipsed round all the London classical record shops asking if they might kindly display a flyer for the recording, and stock what they could. Most knew me well and were happy to oblige.

How to get going

Once my ‘Melos miracle’ was safely out of the way EMI’s German affiliate Electrola issued the identical Huberman coupling as part of their medium-priced ‘historical’ Dacapo line. I was thrilled (I even ditched my own transfer in favour of theirs, which was markedly superior). Most importantly, I’d learnt that the thrill of the old was easily as significant as the thrill of the new, a mantra that I’ve tried to convey ever since. In those days the excitement was in trawling through piles of discs on market stalls and the Gramophone Exchange, but nowadays the fun – and it is fun – has shifted to the internet and the myriad ways you can access all manner of highly individual recorded legends. There’s the rub. Back in the distant past, no two great musicians sounded alike. Nowadays, things are often rather different. Don’t take my word for it, though. Rather, take a glance at my list of chosen ‘essentials’ (a tiny sampling from a massive potential selection admittedly, mostly released at budget price, or thereabouts). Select, say, half a dozen, and jump in.

Suggested listening

Just a few of the countless historical recordings available – and including some artists not mentioned above. Many are available on numerous labels, or for downloading or streaming. I've suggested some of the best-sounding restorations, with labels quoted referring, of course, to CDs. Listen to key tracks in our Apple Music playlist:

Busch Quartet Beethoven late quartets, 1930s Warner Classics (8/99)

Pablo Casals Dvořák & Elgar cello concertos, 1937 & 1945 Warner Classics (2/38, 11/46)

Feodor Chaliapin Mussorgsky Boris Godunov (excerpts), ‘live’, Covent Garden, London, 1928 Guild, Marston (1/29)

Albert Coates with Lauritz Melchior & Frida Leider Wagner Tristan und Isolde – love duet, 1929 online (12/29)

Alfred Cortot Chopin preludes and waltzes, 1933-34 Warner Classics (40 CDs)
(3/34, 3/35)

Roger Désormière Debussy Pelléas et Mélisande, 1941 Pristine Audio, Warner Classics (11/43)

Eileen Farrell Verdi arias, 1960-61 Sony Classical

Emanuel Feuermann Mendelssohn Cello Sonata No 2, 1939 Biddulph (9/70)

Ignaz Friedman Chopin mazurkas, 1920s & 1930s Danacord, Naxos

Wilhelm Furtwängler Beethoven Symphony No 9, Bayreuth 1951 BIS, Orfeo, Warner Classics (11/55)

Wilhelm Furtwängler Bruckner Symphony No 9, Berlin 1944 Berliner Philharmoniker, DG, Pristine Audio (12/63)

Vladimir Horowitz under John Barbirolli Rachmaninov Piano Concerto No 3, 1941 APR (6/97)

Bronisław Huberman under William Steinberg Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, 1928
Naxos, Opus Kura (11/29)

Serge Koussevitzky Sibelius Symphony No 7, 1933 Naxos, Pearl (1/34)

John McCormack Kathleen Mavourneen & other songs, 1925-42 Marston, RCA Camden (8/39)

Willem Mengelberg & Concertgebouw Orchestra Mahler Symphony No 4, 1939 Pristine Audio, willemmengelberg.nl (4/86)

Willem Mengelberg & New York Philharmonic Strauss Ein Heldenleben, 1928 Pristine Audio, Biddulph, willemmengelberg.nl (10/31)

Yehudi Menuhin under Sir Edward Elgar Elgar Violin Concerto, 1932 Naxos, Warner Classics (11/32)

Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli Bach–Busoni & Brahms, 1948 Warner Classics (7/49, 2/50)

Yevgeny Mravinsky Tchaikovsky Pathétique Symphony, 1960 DG (stereo) (11/61)

Zara Nelsova vc Bloch Schelomo, 1955 Decca (8/55)

Rosa Ponselle Bellini Norma – ‘Casta diva’, 1929 Romophone (7/29)

Sergey Rachmaninov Plays his concertos and various solo works, 1919-42 RCA, Naxos

Artur Schnabel Beethoven piano sonatas, 1932-35 Warner Classics, Naxos, Pearl (12/16)

Leopold Stokowski Stravinsky Petrushka, 1950 Testament (5/55)

Joseph Szigeti Brahms Violin Concerto, 1928 Pristine Audio (6/29)

Václav Talich Smetana Má vlast, 1939 Supraphon

Maggie Teyte & Alfred Cortot Debussy songs, 1936 Warner Classics (2/37)

Arturo Toscanini Verdi Otello, 1947 RCA (12/53)

Arturo Toscanini Wagner Götterdämmerung – Dawn, 1941 Guild, RCA

This article originally appeared in the April 2023 issue of Gramophone magazine. Never miss an issue of the world's leading classical music magazine – subscribe to Gramophone today