Box Set Selections, Boxed Set Selections - June 2023

Doráti began recording with the Minneapolis Symphony for Mercury in 1952 (three years after taking over as Music Director), and this newly remastered set brings together the 24 mono albums which they made together. Repertoire here includes suites from Stravinsky's The Firebird, Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty, Kodály's Peacock Variations, Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, and Bartók's The Miraculous Mandarin.

Available Format: 31 CDs

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This 27-album box sees Doráti revisiting some of the repertoire which he had previously recorded in mono (such as The Rite of Spring, Scheherazade, Pines of Rome and Strauss tone-poems), plus relative rarities by Paul Fetler, Wayne Peterson and Gunther Schuller and Doráti himself.

Look out for Paul's podcast exploring these boxes next month, featuring Rob Cowan and Thomas Fine; Fine supervised or worked directly on the remastering of all these recordings, and his parents Bob and Wilma spent much of their careers as engineer and producer for Mercury.

Available Format: 30 CDs

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This special edition of Bernstein’s American Columbia recordings with the New York Philharmonic from the 1950s and 1960s includes the 1958 Rite of Spring (recorded just two months after his appointment as Music Director), Beethoven's Eroica and Mahler's Symphony No. 3. Also featured are the original Broadway cast recordings of Candide and West Side Story (conducted by Max Goberman and Samuel Krachmalnick respectively), and two recordings showcasing Bernstein the pianist: Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue and a recital of Mahler lieder with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau.

Available Format: 11 CDs

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In the wake of Elder's recent performances of The Dream of Gerontius, The Apostles and The Kingdom in Manchester (described by The Arts Desk as 'one of those landmarks in music making that will be long remembered'), the Hallé reissue the recordings which he made with the orchestra between 2008 and 2012. All three recordings were shortlisted for Gramophone Awards, and The Apostles was BBC Music Magazine's Recording of the Year in 2013.

Available Formats: 6 CDs, MP3, FLAC

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Among the many highlights on this collection of the Austrian violinist's complete recordings for the Yellow Label are the landmark 1952 set of the Beethoven sonatas with Wilhelm Kempff, the same composer's Triple Concerto with Géza Anda and Pierre Fournier, the JS Bach sonatas for violin & harpsichord with Karl Richter, and a substantial selection of Mozart sonatas with Carl Seemann. A handful of twentieth-century works also feature, including concertos by Frank Martin, Hans Werner Henze and Stravinsky.

Available Format: 34 CDs

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This set brings together the eleven Schubert albums which Goerne recorded for Harmonia Mundi between 2008 and 2018, with partners including Elisabeth Leonskaja, Helmut Deutsch, Andreas Haefliger and Christoph Eschenbach. Highlights include a Winterreise which BBC Music Magazine ranked 'among the great accounts' of the cycle, a 'profoundly considered, deeply felt' (Gramophone) recording of Die schöne Müllerin, and a recital of nocturnal songs with Alexander Schmalcz, who arranged a selection of songs for Goerne's recent Schubert Revisited project.

Available Format: 11 CDs

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Described by Petrenko as 'a musical snapshot of the early collaboration between the Berliner Philharmoniker and myself, and at the same time the initial spark of our association', this potted history of his first year at the helm in Berlin comprises recordings of Beethoven's Symphonies Nos. 7 & 9, Tchaikovsky's Symphonies Nos. 5 & 6, Franz Schmidt's Symphony No. 4, and Rudi Stephan's Music for Orchestra.

(The set was released on CD/Blu-ray in 2020).

Available Format: 6 Vinyl Records

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