I'm not much into classical but my parents have about 100 classical CDs so I do have some idea of what to look for in a good recording. My lone Telarc rec is Zander's Mahler's 6th SACD and it sounds amazingly realistic, especially the 5.1 channel SACD mix (assuming the speakers are properly placed with the correct delay settings and are not being fed more bass than they can handle and calibrated with an SPL meter...no one ever said multi-channel was easy ). I believe this is my only pure DSD disc and comes very, very close to my best LPs. The CD layer is excellent too but why would I listen to that at home? (I never listen to classical in the car)

For me the music comes first. If it's well recorded so much the better but my problem with labels like Telarc and Classic Records is the vast majority of their stuff simply doesn't move me.

I'll take lo-fi music I like over audiophile pap anyday