From: "Steve Smith" <ssmith36@sprynet.com>
(Here's a tip - NO orchestra is infallible, no matter what anyone says... but the Cleveland Orchestra is the closest thing to perfection I ever expect to hear.)
Until I was about 20, my background was nothing but pop and rock, rock and pop. My parents had a small stack of vinyl, but it was all Mitch Miller, Eddy Arnold, the Longines Symphonette, etc. But there was one classical album that completely laid me out flat: Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 2, Szell conducting Cleveland, Rudolf Serkin at the pianner. I never understood, and still don't, why that recording made my blood sing like it did and no other piece of the standard classical literature ever has since. The vinyl is long since gone, but I listen to snippets of it in my head to this day. (I wonder if it's in print somewhere.) William Crump