Box Set Selections,
Boxed Set Selections - September 2020
This month's heavyweights include the complete works of Ravel on Warner Classics, a fortieth birthday set from Belgian early music label Ricercar, anthologies celebrating Zubin Mehta, Maria João Pires and Jóhann Jóhannsson, and a handsomely-presented collection marking the centenary of Polish independence.
This 21-CD set features contributions from the composer himself as conductor, pianist (on piano rolls) and artistic director, as well as more recent recordings from artists including Martha Argerich, Samson François, Dame Janet Baker, Sir John Barbirolli, André Cluytens, Michel Plasson, and Charles Munch.
Available Format: 21 CDs
Made between 1967 and 2000, many of the recordings on this 27-CD set feature the Indian conductor at the helm of the Israel and New York Philharmonics, both of which he served as Music Director for long periods; the repertoire includes Mahler, Stravinsky, Orff, Berlioz, Gershwin, Puccini and Verdi. Three DVDs are also included: Perlman in Russia, an on-location film of Tosca, and the legendary 1994 Three Tenors concert from Rome.
Available Format: 27 CDs + 3 DVD Videos
Curated to celebrate the centenary of Polish independence in 2018 and now released for the first time outside Poland, this 36-disc set features music by composers including Szymanowski, Sikorski, Rogowski, Tansman, Morawski, Wiechowicz, Kondracki and Laks, and is rounded off by Krzysztof Penderecki's Fanfare for the Independent Poland, which was written for the centenary and would be one of his last works. The set includes score-sized booklets of programme-notes, presented in a drawer section of the main box.
Available Format: 36 CDs
Recorded live over the last decade of the conductor’s life, these accounts of Symphonies Nos. 3, 4, 6 7, 8 and 9 have previously been released individually on the orchestra’s own label and have garnered considerable praise, with Gramophone describing Jansons’s approach as ‘broadly based yet purposeful’ and BBC Music Magazine enjoying the ‘weighty string tone and noble sonorities from the horns’.
Available Formats: 6 CDs, MP3, FLAC
Taken from the archives of the South West German Broadcasting Services (Südwestrundfunk) in Stuttgart, these recordings include music by some of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century composers whom Reiner championed throughout his career (such as Volkmann, Oboussier, Raphael, Goetz, Blacher, Reznicek and Pfitzner) as well as core repertoire such as Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and Mendelssohn.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
This 14-CD box contains Reiner’s complete commercial recordings with the Pittsburgh Symphony (of which he was Music Director from 1938 to 1948), including his teacher Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra, Shostakovich's Symphony No. 6, Ravel’s La valse and Strauss’s Don Quixote and Ein Heldenleben, as well as a set of the complete Brandenburg Concertos.
Available Format: 14 CDs
Taken from Itter’s off-air tapes of concert and studio broadcasts (which were subsequently transferred to disc acetates and remained untouched for sixty years), these recordings feature most of the major British orchestras of the period, with conductors including Otto Klemperer, Fritz Stiedry, Basil Cameron, Eugen Jochum, Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt, and Jean Martinon.
Available Formats: 8 CDs, MP3, FLAC
Chris O'Reilly - Chief Executive
