Thanks guys....had the fortunate opportunity of listening to a high end store once, i couldn't remember all the names of the gears except that the amp used were Krell for the lows and Mcintosh for the highs using active cross-overs, the speakers were gigantic (forgot the name)...the sales guy obliged us to play the CD we had brought along...wow, i think that's the first and last time i'll be able to experience literally seeing through the holographic stage of each section of the orchestra...first time i was really moved by the music.
The above gears i mentioned cost in the millions already and i was just wondering if given the proper electronics and room treatments, can a bookshelf or the horn types fostex give a semblance of the orchestral event. 
You must have listened at Listening In Style Shangri-la Edsa with those towering Genesis speakers costing around 2M just for speakers alone.
It really depends on how powerful the sounds you want at home. Definitely a full 70 man orchestra will sound thunderous especially if you want to recreate the 120db sound pressure levels received by the conductor at the podium. Not to mention the addition of a 100-strong choir performing Beethoven's last movement in his 9th symphny. Don't expect most entry and mid-priced commercial amps and speakers to recreate that accurately at home. Whether bookshelf or floorstanders. At low to moderate listening volumes, maybe. But not podium strength. Or even first row concert hall strength. They'll just fall apart, so to speak.
Trios, quartets, quintets in Jazz and most pop ensemble music with just drums, guitars, piano, bass, a couple of wind instruments are relatively easy to capture and reproduce. But for large orchestral music spread accross a wide stage with more than 50 similar and different instruments, recording studios have been racking their brains trying to arrive at the best microphone placements and mixing solutions to capture and downmix them into a pathetic 2-channel master and still expect them to sound great on typical household playback appliances. The best recordings do give some goosebumps from time to time on a great playback system.
I guess your best bet is really to go BIG and get some tower speakers with multiple drivers or driver arrays as they are called. Or those tall panel speakers from Martin Logan and Magnepan. Multiple drivers ensure multiple engines that should be able to drive complex frequencies more effortlessly. But they have inherent design problems that if not overcome, can muddle the sound. Their crossover networks are often more complex with steep slopes, and again, if not properly designed, can introduce more phase alignment problems and distortions. And overcoming these design constraints will often make them expensive, in addition to those multiple drivers and heavy cabinetry. And definitely you would need oodles of brute RMS power or a very sensitive set of speakers. If you like large orchestral works to sound convincing at podium or first row strength, short of a major DIY endeavor, you may have little choices.
If you have an SACD or DVD-A player, you may want to consider 5.1 channels of large orchestral works. In my experience, the DVD-A mix of the Beethoven cycle from Daniel Barrenboim does give justice to the pieces though I still prefer some Karajan readings in plain stereo. There have been great recordings in the 4-channel format made in the mid-70s that were transcribed into SACD. Haven't heard them, but they should sound less muddled at loud volumes. In theory, the more dedicated channels there are for a set of instruments, the less intermodulation distortion products and thus you get better detailing and less muddling. Just my thoughts.
