12 Soloists and Ensembles Who (Almost) Never Made A Bad Record 

Congrats. Dave on 29k--you brought plenty of joy and knowledge to us all! Keep going!!

Great talk - I would say Arthur Rubinstein ought to be on your list- he could play Chopin (of course), Debussy, Ravel, Beethoven, Schumann Brahms...and he was a great chamber music pianist - which is rare for a 'great' pianist.....

We have to have violinists! Interesting choice of pianists, two of whom are newly liberated Hyperion artists. Stephen Hough has never made a dud that I can think of, he's always stellar.

I'm a bit late to the debate but I'd like to throw into this mix Consortium Classicum, especially Dieter Klöcker for his beavering away in obscure archives to bring to light some wonderful forgotten stuff, even by major composers such as Haydn.

Great talk, Dave, thank you. I certainly thought Dinu Lipatti would be included in your solo pianists list as his elegance, clarity, strong rhythmic sense, beautiful tone, and articulation always served the music in his limited discography that set standards from Bach to Ravel. Though your choices were enlightening, of course!

Ivan Moravec is one of my most favorite pianists. I hope we will have a "Complete Ivan Moravec" big box

Great list. I like this “never made a bad recording” series. I have to add, however, The Florestan Trio. They weren’t around for a long time, but they made many recordings and if they made a bad one, I have yet to discover it. If the evil god cancrezans banished me to a deserted island and said that I HAD to choose one trio to listen to for the rest of my days and I HAD to choose between the Florestan Trio or the Wanderer Trio… I would choose Florestan.

Wonderful to listen to, as usual. But Josef Suk in the Suk trio was not the grandson of Dvorak. He was the grandson of the elder Josef Suk and great grandson of Dvorak.

Murray perahia absolutely solid from Bach to Brahms. My favorite box set.

If we are to include chamber orchestras in this list, I would like to add the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra in this list. The big Orpheus box was almost universally top class.

All excellent choices... I was happy to have quite a number of boxed sets from the ensembles you mentioned. I was sort of hoping that a few of my favorites - The Hollywood String Quartet , The Eastman Wind Ensemble & Earl Wild - would be part of your picks, but perhaps for another day. Thank you, Dave.

Really interesting. Thank you. Maybe in a future edition you could include Heinz Holliger. He was completely extraordinary. Of course it's not the piano repertoire but really there was no-one like him. And he was in a tiny group of wind players whose technique meant that there was never a gap or delay between the thought and the sound. Just a thought.

Another great selection, David. Three cheers for Steven Osborne and Marc-André Hamelin. Two obvious pianists not included are Vladimir Horowitz and Martha Argerich - both fabulous - while I would also have considered Stephen Hough, always at the service of the music. In the last group you discussed, I might have included the Nash Ensemble

I just listened to Brahms string sextets and quintets with the Mandelring quartet. Marvelous. As for the recommendations I know them all…😮. Hamelin recording or fauré barcarolles and nocturnes , omg…

Steven Osborne is local to me, so I've heard him play quite a bit and do you know, great as his recordings are - he's even better live!

Another enjoyable discussion, as usual. With the conductors list, I've been watching the channel long enough (and subsequently buying recommended recordings) that I was able to anticipate most of the names on the list, and none surprised me. For this one, I really appreciated the miscellaneous ensembles list because that's an area in which I'm less familiar. I have the Netherlands and BSCP box sets because you recommended them, but I don't think I realized the Melos was more than a quartet. I have their Schubert recordings but nothing else. Edit: and as I do some research, I now see that the Melos Quartet had nothing to do with the Melos Ensemble...so that group is entirely new to me then. My question is, could you possibly recommend some other ad-hoc ensembles who are of a similar quality? As you said in the video, this is also a way to promote less common repertoire since those unusually constituted arrangements won't be performed or recorded as often, so you've gotten me curious about what is out there. I will have to dig deeper into what the Melos Ensemble did, certainly. I believe the Chineke! Orchestra is also capable of functioning that way (I know they recorded a Coleridge-Taylor nonet, anyway). What are your thoughts on the Kaleidoscope Chamber Ensemble, for example? Their repertoire is interesting to me, at least.

Ahh the Melos Ensemble! It was their Lp of-as I recall-Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro and Debussy’s String Quartet and the three late Sonatas. That shimmering Lp opened my world - 50 years plus ago-to that music. Wish I still had it!

Your offerings become richer and richer - a trove of information and inspiration. On the subject of coffee-table books (and CDs) I hope you are planning to offer your comments on the recent snazzy release (SONY) of book+16 discs devoted to José Iturbi. Lots to look at, lots to hear. All done well (and much welcome than more Bernstein) in my estimation. And a pianist we do not encounter all that often.

Hyperion also have the Takacs Quartet, who are worth a mention on their own, but who also have made some recordings with Hamelin. I'd also nominate the Hollywood String Quartet as never having made a bad record.

Goodness me, what a wealth of recommendations! I'm lucky enough to have the complete Quartetto Italiano Beethoven quartets, and the Beaux Arts Trio Dvorak and Haydn sets, a smattering of the Julliard, and Hamelin's Godowsky transcriptions of the Chopin etudes, but I'm missing a lot here. Indeed, there are complete recordings available of The Boston Symphony Chamber Players (RCA) and Netherlands Wind Ensemble (Eloquence/Philips), and many other discs and streaming options for all of these artists, I suppose.

great list! Gil Shaham is possibly the violinist whose recordings have never disappointed me. moreover, I find that it renews certain works from this small repertoire. For that I would add it to this list.

Frankly, I don't reckon any bad record by the Mosaïques Quartet, Granted, their repertoire is limited, but the complain of some listeners is that they usually observe all the notated repeats. This time, you excluded violin players, but I propose Giuliano Carmignola - doing both common and unusual repertoire - as a musician incapable of doing bad recordings. Also, Alina Ibragimova, James Ehnes and Hiilary Hahn, all of them very versatile repertoire-wise

Enlightening. Shows how little I know by comparison. Many thanks, Dave! (I imagined you'd be mentioning the Borodin quartet and the Fitzwilliam ((I've got the Shostakovich fifteen)), Andres Schiff, Salvatore Accardo, Gil Shaham etc...)

First of all, I agree that all of your choices are outstanding, so I'm not arguing with any of them. And I've long been a fan of the Beaux Arts Trio and the Quartetto Italian. More recently, I've discovered the Suk Trio, including their Beethoven, and they are terrific. Limiting a list to just 3 pianists present an impossible problem, of course, since there are so many great ones. But one pianist I'd like to nominate, on the basis of simply not making bad records, is Arthur Rubinstein. I have his complete recordings on RCA (141 CDs). Many are great. Some are merely good. But I don't remember any bad ones. Richter, proposed by another commenter, could be, as you say, wildly inconsistent, in part because most of his recordings were made live and he wasn't always ON on any given night. But Rubinstein, who recorded mainly in the studio, really cared about his recordings, and he wouldn't release one until it met his high standards.

Great picks, Dave. I think that a honorable mention of sorts for the miscellaneous options should be made to the Academy of St.Martin in the Fields (imo).

Beaux Arts Trio and Emerson String Quartet would be my picks.

Two of my favorites made it: Quartetto Italiano & Ivan Moravec!

A fun, useful video. I took notes, which I will use looking for stuff on streaming services. I'd like to suggest my own addition: The Songmakers Almanac (NOT the same as the Songwriters Almanac), consisting of Felicity Lott (soprano), Kathryn Rudge (mezzo-soprano), John Mark Ainsley (tenor), Roderick Williams (baritone), and Christopher Glynn (piano). These guys are so amazing, I even have purchased CDs with just one of them, recording with a few other soloists, and always been satisfied.

the quartetto italiano did one of my desert island discs as it were - beethovens heiliger dankgesang - they play it in 19:31 minutes i know im sentimental and i live up to all the hagiography but when i think about that recording i get emotional thanking the lord for beethovens very existence and i want to say his self sacrifice (i know its all a bit silly) for such a famous piece it seems to be played far too fast almost universally at least to my mind purely selfish but i would love you to find some excuse to talk about this piece in depth in a video somwhere anyway thank you ta x

Moravec obviously got his ideas of fine tuning your piano and publicly playing only a small repertoire that you could play perfectly from his teacher, Michelangeli, whom he revered. They apparently later became best of friends and drinking buddies.

Great video!

The next list is of people who NEVER made a GOOD record 😇

I'd say that for its brief (little over a decade) existence the Hollywood String Quartet hardly ever made a bad recording over a broad range of repertoire and some of it unsurpassed.

Speaking of piano trios, I've yet to hear a bad performance from the Florestan Trio.

Philip Jones Brass Ensemble, might they be deemed worthy?

I found the section on solo pianists the most interesting.

I enjoy these listings as It would have been easy for you to reel off the usual names - but instead (no doubt as a result of your decision to limit each category to 3 examples) - you surprise and challenge us to seek out artists who we may have overlooked, I don't believe many artists make a BAD record - many make mediocre recordings - many make poor artistic decisions - many are let down by the production values - many are under-rehearsed - but few are truly BAD; but the names you have selected are exemplars of a consistent high standard & as such are reliable choice if one is unsure of a version to choose.

Can’t quibble with the list. On the pianists, well, so many choices and depends what you mean by a bad record. On the ensembles, great choices. Maybe one of the contemporary music ensembles could get credit - the composers’ ensembles (minimalists), the ensemble intercontemporain (I know, but such skill and advocacy), ensemble modern as examples. And the Nash ensemble, which maybe gets taken for granted, but look how many great records they have done over the years.

Fun discussion...please keep them coming. Just for shitz & giggles, how about one on conductors that NEVER made a good recording...other than Josha Horenstein 🤣

I'm glad you mentioned the Panocha Quartet. I bought their disc of the Janacek quartets on your recommendation, even though you named the Prazak as your top pick. But the moment I heard their amazing tone and the idiomatic and lively playing of the music, I barely wanted to hear anyone else. I'll eventually explore their recordings in other repertoire.

Are you familiar with the discography of Christian Lindberg? I know you said that violin didn’t have enough repertoire to mention so the trombone definitely doesn’t deserve to be on this list. I do however think that lindberg is one of the best musicians of our times and deserves a video maybe?

Steven Osborne is a great choice - you perhaps could just as well have chosen Stephen Hough, another superb stalwart of Hyperion's glittering catalogue of recording artistes - a pianist of great intelligence and fine sensitivity - just listen to his renditions of the Chopin Nocturnes for example, as they capture the exquisite essence of these masterpieces to perfection. I feel Wilhelm Kempff deserves a nomination too, as he bequeathed to us a legacy which bears witness to a deep, innate understanding of the core Austro-German repertoire. I know violinists come outside your discussion's area of interest, but I would like to sing the praises of Nathan Milstein - although his discography is not large, it is nonetheless full of some of the most "aristocratic" fiddle playing one is ever likely to hear - the DG Complete Recordings box represents a "must have" acquisition.

And the Borodin Quartet.

Controversial choice, butbI think Sviatoslav Richter deserves a mention.

I really dug Quartet Italiano's recording of Webern's string quartet works.