One of my absolute favorites is Toscaninni doing Respighi's the Pines of Rome. His opening movement has done more to make it lifelike and jump out of the speakers than anyone else's. There have been better recording, more audiophile but for sheer music and dynamics his opening cannot be beat IMHO.
Good MONO recordings
I listen almost exclusively to vinyl (classical and jazz), and 98% of the time I prefer listening to Stereo over Mono, but every now and then a mono comes along that really stands out in it's detail, dynamics and coherency in a way that stereo often doesn't. Obviously there's a lot of great performances that were recorded in mono that are tolerated just to hear the music - but I'd be interested in hearing from people about any Mono recordings they consider in the top tier sonically.