Box Set Selections,
Boxed Set Selections - October 2020
This month’s heavyweights include Daniel Barenboim’s fifth complete cycle of the Beethoven piano sonatas, a celebration of Mariss Jansons’s time in Oslo, Rimsky-Korsakov's complete operas from the Bolshoi, and a mammoth 80-disc collection of Wilhelm Kempff’s recordings for Deutsche Grammophon.
Kempff recorded almost exclusively for Deutsche Grammophon throughout his six-decade career, and in addition to his many recordings for the Yellow Label this set also includes a near-complete Beethoven cycle licensed from APR and made between 1925 and 1934. The collection is divided into four ‘chapters’ – Concerto Recordings, Chamber Music, Solo Repertoire, and Shellac Recordings – and is supplemented by a 160-page booklet including new liner-notes by Gregor Wilmes and many original photos.
Available Format: 80 CDs
Released to mark the fifth anniversary of Petrenko’s election as the orchestra’s new Chief Conductor, this set features Beethoven’s Symphonies Nos. 7 and 9, Tchaikovsky’s Symphonies Nos. 5 and 6, Franz Schmidt’s Symphony No. 4, and Rudi Stephan’s Music for Orchestra, supplemented by a rare extensive interview with the Russian conductor.
Available Formats: 5 CDs + 1 Blu-ray Audio + 1 Blu-ray Video, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Latvian conductor served as Music Director of the Oslo Philharmonic from 1979 to 2002, and this 21-CD box collects together their complete recordings for Warner Classics, which focused particularly on late-Romantic and twentieth-century repertoire. Also included are 5 DVDs of concerts originally broadcast on Norwegian television, featuring works by Sibelius, Mahler, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, Strauss, and Franck.
Available Format: 21 CDs + 5 DVD Videos
Bringing together the American-Hungarian conductor’s complete recordings for HMV, this 14-CD box features concerto performances with Bronisław Huberman, Emil Gilels, David Oistrakh and Mstislav Rostropovich, and Mozart and Strauss with Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. The set also includes interview and rehearsal recordings, the audio documentary George Szell – A Memoir, and new-to-CD recordings of music by Weber, Wagner, and Johann Strauss II.
Available Formats: 14 CDs, MP3, FLAC
Released to commemorate the ninetieth anniversary of the Czech pianist’s birth, this anthology includes concertos by Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Schumann, Ravel and Prokofiev, solo works by Chopin, Smetana, Debussy, Martinů and Janáček, and a DVD with a documentary and previously unseen footage from the Czech Television archives. Several of the recordings here are receiving their first release on CD, and a number of the older ones have been remastered from the original analogue tapes.
Available Format: 11 CDs + DVD Video
Part of a series marking the Munich-based label’s fortieth anniversary, this set features nine pianists in recordings dating from the 1950s to the 2000s: Géza Anda, Bruno Leonardo Gelber, Friedrich Gulda, Wilhelm Kempff, Oleg Maisenberg, Konstantin Lifschitz, Carl Seemann, Gerhard Oppitz, and Rudolf Serkin.
Available Formats: 10 CDs, MP3, FLAC
The nine conductors of the Ninth on this anniversary DVD boxed set are Jascha Horenstein (1963), Otto Klemperer (1964), Herbert von Karajan (1977), Leonard Bernstein (in the 1989 concert celebrating the Fall of the Berlin Wall), Michael Gielen (1999), Claudio Abbado (2000), Daniel Barenboim (2006), Zubin Mehta (2014), and Fabio Luisi (2019).
Available Format: 9 DVD Videos
This tribute to the Polish-born violinist (who died earlier this year) isn’t released until 13th November, but is available to pre-order exclusively through Presto for the next fortnight; Haendel made her first recordings for Decca in 1940 and remained with the label until 1947, returning almost four decades later for a recital of Szymanowski, Bartók and Enescu with Vladimir Ashkenazy. The set also includes a previously unpublished recording of The Lark Ascending from 1997, with the London Philharmonic and Sir Roger Norrington.
Available Format: 6 CDs
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