Box Set Selections,
Boxed Set Selections - August 2018
This month’s collections include three 100th birthday tributes to Leonard Bernstein from Sony, a whistle-stop tour through Neeme Järvi’s four-decade relationship with Chandos, a new remastering of Marie-Claire Alain's first Bach cycle, and a collection of Sir Neville Marriner and The Academy of St Martin in the Fields in nineteenth-century repertoire.
Originally issued on vinyl in 1974, the six lectures which Bernstein gave as Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry the previous year are brought together on CD for the first time here: Bernstein’s subjects include ‘Musical Syntax’, ‘Musical Semantics’, ‘The Delights and Dangers of Ambiguity’, and ‘The Twentieth Century Crisis’.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The veteran Estonian conductor has been recording for Chandos for nearly four decades (notching up over two hundred releases along the way!), and this 25-CD set covers pioneering recordings of composers such as Atterberg, Suchoň, Halvorsen and Fučík whom Järvi has championed throughout his career, as well as more standard repertoire by Prokofiev, Stravinsky, Weber, Smetana and Chabrier.
Available Format: 25 CDs
A rare opportunity to hear Marriner and the orchestra which he founded in Romantic repertoire – with the exception of four Purcell suites and the eight symphonies of William Boyce (which occupy the first two discs), this set is devoted to nineteenth-century music including the complete Tchaikovsky symphonies, Elgar’s Enigma Variations, Mendelssohn’s Paulus, and ballet music by Massenet and Adam.
Available Format: 14 CDs
Recorded in Denmark, Sweden and Germany between 1959 and 1967, the great French organist’s first of three complete traversals of Bach’s organ works was newly remastered in France earlier this year; shortly after completing her third set in the mid-1990s, Alain (who embarked on this project with the intention of recording just a handful of works) declared that this original cycle was ‘the most instinctive’ of the trilogy.
Available Formats: 15 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
A celebration of the American pianist and polymath (1906-72), whose remarkable career encompassed conducting, composing, acting, and appearing as a gameshow panelist and talk-show host. The repertoire includes Khachaturian, Debussy, Chopin, Tchaikovsky and of course Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue - Levant appeared (as himself) in the 1946 film of the same name.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
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