Craig--what I find interesting, and it shows how different people hear things, is that it seems you preferred the DG recording, where I have rarely liked their recordings. I will admit, though, that they do make musically involving recordings on occasion, as sometimes spotlighting an instrument in the mix might better let the emotion of the music come through. Shadorne and others bring up the good point of the recording engineer (I would add the producer too) being of importance. In the classical field some of the people I look for are Mohr-Layton (the original RCA team from back in the 50s), Wilma Cozart-Bob Fine (from the old Mercuries), Kenneth Wilkinson (London/Decca, some RCAs, from the early days of stereo), John Eargle (Delos), Peter McGrath/Tony Faulkner-Robina Young (Harmonia Mundi; Faulkner has done work for others as well), Woods/Bishop-Renner (Telarc), Keith Johnson (Reference Recordings), Kavi Alexander (Water Lily--he is the most purist of this bunch, and quite frankly there are times where his approach might not appeal to me), Craig Dory (Dorian) and the Nicrenz/Aubort team from Vox. EMI had and has a number of good recording teams as well, I just don't recall their names, the engineer I know from there is Simon Woods, who used to be our New Jersy Symphony's CEO, and his recordings were quite good. All of these teams use different techniques to record an orchestra, both from their basic philosophies but also depending on the piece, the venue, the size of the ensemble, the artists (don't think for a minute that Heifetz or Rubenstein didn't want themselves to be spotlit!), etc., and what they come up with may not necessarily sound like what you'd hear in row K of the concert hall, but I think they all have done a good job of getting the bulk of the event on record for us.
