When will there be decent classical music recordings?


With "pop" music the recordings are such that you can hear the rasp of the guitar string, the echo of the piano, the tingle of the percussion ... and so on .... and in surround sound.
Surround sound is brilliant in picking out different instruments that would otherwise have been "lost" or merged with the other sounds.
Someone will say well that is not how you listen at a concert, but that is just archaic. As a friend said many years ago to me ... whats wrong with mono?!
I am sure Beethoven or whomever would have been excited if they could have presented their music in effectively another dimension.
I have yet to come across any classical recording that grabs me in the way it should, or could. Do they operate in a parallel universe musicwise?
I used to play in an orchestra so I am always looking out for the "extra"  presence in music ... in amongst it, not just watching and listening from a distance


tatyana69

"I have yet to come across any classical recording that grabs me in the way it should, or could."

Clearly you have done very very little listening to classical music in recordings where even in boxy mono a Toscanini, Furtwangler, or Mengelberg could grab you by the throat let alone all the way up to the Mercury and Living stereo recordings which are astonishing and jaw dropping.

That is a very naughty thing to say Vindanpar. People look for different things in music. The main thrust of my argument is that little has progressed in presentation of classical music for many many years. Maybe a few people here and there think about what can be achieved, but generally they are shameful in sticking to old rut fomulae. Maybe there are enough old skool people out there listening happily to combined  sounds for a blob of music, but I doubt it. You will of course disagree, and so be it. Hail mono. So many old composers loved to push sensitivity and listening experiences, and were often getting into trouble. As I have written before, I would imagine that their fertile minds would leap at the opportunities today. Probably most of the marketplace is pretty conservative, so any reaching out would generally be self indulgent and pointless and will pretty well almost die in due course.
I hate jazz, but was caught up in listening to Box Biedebecke. I kept on wondering how many were in the group. After listening more specifically I realised it was the same number, but they kept on swapping instruments. Why? Well apart from being impressive it lent different textures to basically the same refrains. They understood this concept nearly 100 years ago - but it has meandered nowhere since - especially of you want to listen to the blob of music from 20 yards away without the detail. You look at the score of any symphony and I would take huge sums of money off you betting you could not hear more than 30% of what was going on.
Did composers write so you only heard an impression of what they wrote? Of course not. They wrote all the extra bits you just will not hear because they knew they were writing to satisfy their own mind.
You can hear the blob music on Itunes and so many people are clearly happy at all the limitations of that. 
As a young girl who worked for me once said "Who are the Beatles?"
If recording is important for you in clasical music try try labels like
"Chandos or L'oiseau-Lyre or Harmunia Mundi they have the best recording,  concerning Jazz look for ECM specialy the recording done by
Manfred Eicher

Shanty   
tatyana69, with all due respect I think you are getting hung up in conceptual quandaries and "missing the (music) forest for the trees". You can’t have it both ways. You are correct, a "composer’s fertile mind" would, in fact, "leap at the opportunities today". However, you seem to be missing some key points:

First, the composers you seem to be referring to DID NOT live today. The tools that you are referring to were not available when they composed. So, the artistic integrity of their works is inextricably linked to what was available to them. Moreover, those very composers would be the first to point out that this reality needs to be respected and that for anyone besides the composer to try and alter how that artistic vision is presented after the fact is to not respect the music and belies a lack of understanding or appreciation of values that are an integral part of quality art; values which emphasize nuance and subtlety ("blob music"?!) and not just the hyper-stimulation that our modern electronically "advanced" culture and it’s music listeners have become accustomed to.


Many thanks to everyone for suggestions re recordings. Have ordered some to test!