I have a lot of different Brandenburg Concerto recordings, because it is:
1 – Great.
2 – Everywhere.
3 – Cheap.
4 – Bach.
The complete recordings cover two discs, so often I’ll find 1-2-3 and need 4-5-6, that kind of thing. I ran across the 1-2-3 that I needed in this case, and had to create a cover so that it would be one complete recording in iTunes/Music, and not two separate cds. I don’t see any need for that in iTunes/Music.

So, of course I have two new versions of the cover, a version similar to the originals, and one that I feel is a bit better.

I updated my iTunes a month ago, coincidentally, so that almost all of my Brandenburgs are in my iTunes/Music. (not everything I have is in there; every cd that I own is ripped and digitized, but not necessarily imported into iTunes/Music.) I am slowly going over the big compositions or artists, and making sure that they are complete. Quite a bit of work, like digitizing and improving family photos, I’m easily never going to be done!

Brand-new, in the shrink-wrap, for a dollar. A 2021 release of a 1995 recording. The thrift store I found this at still has more than twenty copies. How can this be? It sounds fantastic, and covers some of my favorite Bach.

Quite rare to find box sets like this at a busy thrift store like the ARC; even more rare is all twenty-five (ten+fifteen) of the discs were perfect and present; Even more curious is that I wasn’t sure what I was getting, I don’t know much about Sacred Works, and the Haydn Quartets were old, but remastered recordings. I’m not one for bad sound, even if the actual performance is highly regarded.

Turns out that the Sacred Works are basically small choir compositions, something that I’ve recently very much gotten into; the Haydn Quartets sound fine, there is better sound, but they are quite listenable for being recorded in the early-mid 1950s. So, my three-dollar (for both boxes!) gamble really paid off!

I found another “Residence” cd, I don’t see many of these in the thrifts. My original two, of which I listened to quite a bit, I bought new back in the 1990s, and they weren’t cheap back then. Now, they are just a buck or two, if they can be found.

The booklet lists twenty total, so I’m halfway to a full set!

This little “Residence” collection is nothing; I have a friend who put together a complete set of one hundred recordings (Sony: Leonard Bernstein: The Royal Edition) just from shopping thrifts for years. That is the feat to beat in classical music thrifting!

The one time I don’t check the condition of a cd before I buy it at the thrift store… even worse is that the other cd in the set (Vivaldi: Four Seasons) is fine, so… half of the music is there.

The good thing is that I have many different recordings of this piece, so at least it isn’t some rare recording. Still disappointing.

This cd set was anywhere from $10-$24 new back in the day, and I bought both cds for a buck.