Evaluating Classical Music Albums

Forgot to mention, if you still like hard copy magazines, BBC Music is a good read, with reviews of new CD releases each month that focus on performance as well as sonics; as you hear some of the CDs reviewed, you will get an idea of which reviewer's tastes most closely resemble yours.  Plus it has the BBC 3 radio schedule, for those of us who listen to it on internet radio.  And as a bonus, they have a CD with each issue, usually well-recorded and performed.  I have been introduced to a lot of music I would not have heard through those CDs.

I agree with mahler123--after playing with them the past week, Idagio and Primephonics are a great way to sample recordings for good performances as well as sonics.  I also admit to being influenced to a large degree by the record label when I look for recordings of music I want to add to my collection--there are plenty of threads about which ones we prefer for classical music.  

As for the orchestral labels, I have found the San Francisco Symphony recordings to be quite good, both sonically and musically.  I would expect the Berlin Philharmonic label to offer excellent performances, I'll have to listen to the streaming to see how the recording quality holds up.  The LSO Live discs are good in SACD, but I'm not a big fan of the acoustic they record in, seems fairly dead to me.  However, as they are live performances, occasionally you get those special moments when things just gel in a way that you don't often get in studio recordings, so I tend to buy them in hopes of finding those moments.

What I've noticed is that the orchestras' private labels generally use live performances (LSO Live, SFO, Royal Concertgebouw and Berlin Philharmonic, at least in some cases), while most of the commercial labels like Sony, Decca, DG and Phillips still do "studio" recordings, though in the orchestras' concert halls.