I topped and tailed this with some Shostakovich. Firstly, a favourite of mine, a little out of favour at the moment: the Leningrad Symphony, here performed by the Czech Philharmonic under Neumann and paired with the 9th Symphony. At the end of the batch came the Symphony no. 12 and Overture on Russian and Kirghiz folk themes with the Concertgebouw and Haitink.
I continued the trawl through Chopin with the first piano concerto played by Pollini with the Philharmonia and Kletzki. A Decca recording of the Threepenny Opera, made as late as September 1988, must surely be the most recent in our collection. Also one of the longest at little short of the 80 minutes that can be fitted on one of our CDs. Was it practical in the final days of LPs to make really long ones, or were they squeezing on as much as possible so that LPs could be issued parallel to CDs? A Hungaroton recording of Bartók’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta and Divertimento for Strings, played by the Liszt Ferenc Chamber Orchestra. Finally, the Hagen Quartet play D804 and D87 with the inevitable Quartettsatz. The sleeve shows the four players casually strolling across an Alpine meadow, instrument cases in hand, in a rather Sound of Music kind of way.