Box Set Selections,
Boxed Set Selections - April 2018
This month's picks include Leonard Bernstein's 1953 American Decca Recordings from Carnegie Hall, and tributes to Emil Gilels, Monique Haas, Pierre Monteux, and Fritz Wunderlich. There's also David Zinman's complete Mahler symphonies with the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, and a collection of twentieth-century American music from Leonard Slatkin and the Saint Louis and National Symphony Orchestras.
This 14-CD set of recordings made between 1994 and 2017 is now the most comprehensive anthology of WF Bach’s works on the market, and contains his complete keyboard concertos, complete solo works for organ and keyboard, a substantial collection of his cantatas, and various sinfonias and orchestral suites. Also includes numerous works which were previously misattributed to other composers, and several world premiere recordings.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
Leonard Bernstein - The 1953 'American Decca' Recordings
New York Stadium Symphony Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein
Recorded at Carnegie Hall in the summer of 1953, these complete performances of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony, Schumann’s Second Symphony, Brahms’s Fourth Symphony, Dvořák’s From The New World and Tchaikovsky’s Pathétique (all repertoire which Bernstein had never before recorded) are supplemented by the conductor’s spoken commentary on the scores, complete with musical illustrations of his points.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
8 CDs including the last three Tchaikovsky symphonies and Stravinsky’s Petrushka with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Strauss’s Tod und Verklärung and Wagner’s Siegfried-Idyll with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, the Brahms Violin Concerto with Henryk Szeryng and the London Symphony Orchestra, and a Gluck Orfeo ed Euridice from La Scala, with Risë Stevens and Lisa Della Casa in the title-roles.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
French repertoire looms large on this 8-CD collection of recordings from the late 1940s to mid-60s, which includes Ravel’s Piano Concerto (from both 1948 and 1965), Sonatine, Valses nobles et sentimentales and Le tombeau de Couperin, Debussy’s complete Préludes and Études, and Roussel’s Trois pièces Op. 49; also features music by Mozart, Haydn, Stravinsky, Chopin and Hindemith.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
12 discs of recordings made between 1955 and 1962, focusing on the German tenor’s sacred repertoire. Includes complete performances of Bach’s St John and St Matthew Passions under Karl Richter from 1957 in which Wunderlich sings the tenor arias, and later performances of each work in which he also takes on the role of the Evangelist, plus two Stuttgart performances from the 1950s: a Messiah under Heinz Mende and a Beethoven Nine under Isaïe Diesenhaus.
Available Formats: 12 CDs, MP3, FLAC
Zinman’s Mahler cycle with the Zürich Tonhalle has been praised as ‘marvellously cogent’ (The Guardian), ‘superbly played’ (The Observer) and ‘fresh-minted’ (Gramophone); the Symphony of a Thousand (with soloists including Juliane Banse and Anna Larsson, who also feature in the Resurrection Symphony) was a featured recording on Radio 3’s Building a Library in May 2010.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
This 10-CD box includes Harold en Italie with William Primrose as soloist, Les Nuits d’été with Victoria de los Angeles, two performances of Roméo et Juliette (from 1953 and 1961), La Damnation de Faust, Symphonie fantastique and the Grande Messe des morts, as well as the overtures to Béatrice et Bénédict and Benvenuto Cellini.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
13 CDs recorded between 1933 and 1963, with repertoire including the complete Beethoven piano concertos, Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5, sonatas by Scarlatti, CPE Bach, Clementi and Haydn, and a CD of all Gilels's known recordings from 1933-1941 (featuring music by Liszt-Busoni, Schumann, Brahms, Debussy, Rachmaninov and Chopin).
Available Formats: 13 CDs, MP3, FLAC
Chris O'Reilly - Chief Executive
