My Second Taste Of Classical Music In The Early To Mid 1970s: “The Great Musicians” And Few Other Classical Records

Image from Discogs, where you can buy the record(s) and (at least in the case of Mozart Part One) look at more images to read all of the learned information.

You can read about the source of my first taste of classical music, Beano Records aka Tale Spinners, through this link or the image link below.

My First Taste Of Classical Music & Dramatised Stories: A Clutch Of Beano Records (aka Tale Spinners), Perhaps Early 1969

“The Great Musicians”, Around 1972

The next batch of classical records that came my way was a job lot from a series named “The Great Musicians” – click here for the Discogs listing of the whole lot of them – 84 I believe.

These items were a combination of a 10″ disc with one or more great classical works on it and a magazine which talked about the composer, the piece(s), the historical context and all that. Some of the musicology was well beyond me when I was a kid…possibly still is…but I loved reading about the composer and the history and the context, as well as listening to many of the pieces.

I think this batch arrived while I was still at primary school, perhaps my 10th birthday. I have a feeling they were a gift from Uncle Michael and Auntie Pam, but I might be mistaken on that point. Perhaps dad found the remaindered batch (as was his wont) and the aforementioned couple chose to fund dad’s purchase as an avuncular gift. They weren’t expert at choosing presents for a kid and/but might well have relished the opportunity to gift me something my folks deemed appropriate.

Here’s the list of my batch of 36, with the series number alongside. I shall provide links to the Discog listings where and when I am able:

Here is a link to the playlist I have made up with as many of the above recordings as I can find in YouTube Music. Don’t be put off by the strike-through you might see on this link – anyone can click through and hear this music, but you’ll get adverts if you are not a YouTube Music subscriber.

Several years later I added a couple to my collection of The Great Musicians through Record & Tape Exchange, but soon realised that I wanted more modern recordings of pieces, especially those I hadn’t steeped myself in with the older recordings:

A Few Other Classical Albums, Mostly “Greatest Hits”, c1972-1975

The rest of our…or I should say, my…classical collection of records was tiny during my chidhood.

I think “The Great Musicians” sparked enough interest in me that I occasionally chose to spend a bit of my pocket money/birthday money on such records. Mum advised and encouraged me towards budget-priced items in W H Smith, several from a Columbia/CBS series badged as “Greatest Hits” albums.

Mum was very keen on Chopin and also liked Bizet – especially after I had “starred” in Carmen for the Putney Operatic Society, type-cast as one of the chorus of urchins. More on my opera career when I find the incriminating photographic evidence…in a box somewhere it is…I think I know where…but not to hand right now.

Anyway, here are the first 12 classical LPs in my catalogue, which I know for sure takes us up to 1975, when I was given a box set of Tchaikovsky Ballet Music and the Berlin Philharmonic “Tchaikovsky Works” album for my Bar mitzvah, by Arnold & Leatrice Levene. Yes, they who educated me in arthroplasty also advancing my interest in music – they were those sort of people.

A Private Lesson In Arthroplasty, Hockey, Supervising Entrance Exams, Viola Mooted, A Field Trip To Kew Gardens & Far Too Much TV: Alleyn’s School & Beyond In The First Half Of February 1975

I suspect that the above record got more play than any of the others. Mum loved it and if I wasn’t playing it or some other record, she might have been playing it herself.

I played all of them a lot, apart from the second side of the Britten and the rather thin compilation albums I have numbered 006 and 010, which I recall never liking. I have managed to source all the stuff I listened to a lot onto a YouTube playlist – click here – do not be put off if you see a strikethrough on that link, you can still click through and listen if you wish. The Tchaikovsky Ballet Suites box set are on the following separate link – click here, tracks 61 to 119 of the canonical Tchaikovsky recordings by Eugene Ormandy & the Philadelphia Orchestra, while Herbert’s “Tchaikovsky Works” record brings up the rear on the main playlist link:

Just three works…not THE works.

One thought on “My Second Taste Of Classical Music In The Early To Mid 1970s: “The Great Musicians” And Few Other Classical Records”

  1. Pingback: Twixt Keele & Cardiff: Classical Collections & Connections, Early March 1985 – Ian Louis Harris

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