A year ago my goodwife said she was going to replace the Pioneer CD player she had gotten at CostCo that fell apart (all the parts broke one after another and all was toast within three years) and I told her to wait. I went looking for a real stereo, but did not find any in the stores. Then I discovered the vintage market. It was possible to get a super stereo, one part at a time, using Craigslist and we now have a setup that the showrooms in the 60's and early 70's would have featured for their most well healed clients (not the drooling visitors with empty pockets such as us). I then discovered that the aging boomers were selling off their father's classical record collections by the cartloads, for peanuts, and we picked up almost two thousand lp's in short order for next to nothing. It has been an education. There appear to have been several must-have compositions in each collection... such as Beethoven's 9th, Ravel's Bolero, Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, and such like, which gave me an opportunity to compare the orchestras, the conductors, and the record engineering... and I can tell you it makes a huge difference. As important as the work itself is the particular recording of it. I wound up with four versions of Brahm's Symphony No. 4, and one of them, Angel records Chicago Symphony version conducted by Giulini was so very poorly recorded that it was difficult to sit through after having heard the others. So if anyone has a strong recommendation of a particularly brilliant recording of a work, it would also be useful to know.
The best recording of any Vivaldi works I have ever heard is Hogwood's Academy of Ancient Music's "Vivaldi Concertos" DSLO 544 issued by L'oiseau Lyre in the mid 70's. It is an incomparable and delightful performance and arrangement of instruments and the highest possible quality of recording.
Then there are the recording of particular virtuoso performers which are also worth seeking out, such as the Cellist Pierre Fournier, the Pianist Friedrich Gulda, the Oboists Heinz Holliger and Leon Goossen, and then there are the particular instrumental works such as Mozart's and Haydn's bassoon concertos and oboe concertos and flute concertos. You can also download excellent contemporary performances of many classical works by exploring the Classical Cat website at
http://www.classiccat.net/index.htm
I highly recommend the performances by the violinists and cellists who have posted to that site.
One of the previous posts include in their recommendations Arvo Part, the modern day choral composer from Estonia who creates medieval inspired religious music. I wish I could get a recording of the two short Christmas works he wrote that were performed during this year's European Christmas broadcast, I think it was from the Munich concert... amazing works of art.
Anyway, that's all one self-educated construction worker has to say on the subject.