Although Yvonne Loriod (1924-2010) was best known for giving standard-setting interpretations of music by her husband, Olivier Messiaen, her repertoire embraced a wider range of styles and composers than one might expect, as this 13-disc collection of her complete Vega label recordings bears out. Loriod’s Mozart may not plumb the music’s expressive subtext, yet her […]
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Big Boxes: Yvonne Loriod’s Complete Vega Recordings
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Reference Recording: Slatkin’s Tchaikovsky Ballets
There have been many recordings of the three great Tchaikovsky ballets by the same conductor, and Slatkin’s recordings typically get overlooked in any discussion of them. This is a pity, because his versions are uniformly superb, beautifully engineered, and wholly idiomatic. Is it because no one regards the Saint Louis Symphony as the major orchestra […]
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Erato’s Fauré Box: There And Back Again
We’ve been here before. Most of the Fauré recordings contained in this 12-disc set have been reissued too many times to count. Still, for what it’s worth, Erato’s budget price and original jacket format should entice collectors who’ve yet to add Jean-Philippe Collard’s reference-worthy chamber collaborations and solo piano cycles to their libraries. Fauré’s Op. […]
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Big Boxes: Anne Queffélec’s Complete Erato Recordings
Anne Queffélec never made a bad recording. Some are better than others, true, but her accomplished technique and tasteful musicianship consistently make themselves felt throughout the 21 discs comprising her complete Erato and Virgin Classics recordings, gathered together in a specially priced boxed set. The discs are packaged in replicas of the original LP and […]
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Warner Presents Berlioz’s Complete Works, Mostly, and Mostly Terrific
These 27 well-packed CDs contain just about everything that Berlioz wrote. The most obvious items missing are the extra prelude that Berlioz added to The Trojans in Carthage when the complete opera was broken up as two separate works, and the arrangement for female chorus and orchestra of The Death of Ophelia. Indeed, the three […]
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CD From Hell: Karajan’s Choral Music Box
If you think that songs like “Dropkick Me Jesus Through the Goalposts of Life” represent sincere expressions of religious sentiment, then you’ll surely respond to Karajan’s handling of the choral music in this set. Indeed, calling it “choral music” may be technically correct, but what this really is, of course, is “religious” or “sacred music,” […]
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Big Boxes: Virtuoso Piano Etudes
This 22-CD boxed set more-or-less encompasses the history of the piano etude. It contains several Brilliant Classics releases devoted to complete etude cycles by various composers, along with disc compilations culled both from the label’s back catalog and various licensed labels. The curatorial vision behind the selections is well intentioned but sometimes haphazard, often relying […]
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The Complete Juilliard on RCA: Pretty Spectacular
For a brief period in the late 50s, the Juilliard Quartet left Columbia and made a nicely representative batch of recordings for RCA. However, collectors beware! The majority of these recordings were already released as part of RCA’s 60-disc Living Stereo miscellaneous box. Not included there were the Mozarts (K. 387 and 465), the Haydns […]
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The Juilliard Quartet’s Epic Epic Recordings
The Juilliard Quartet’s recordings for Columbia (now Sony/BMG) deserve a big box all to themselves. Will they ever do it? Who knows? It would be huge. This release serves to whet the appetite. Originally the group recorded for Columbia’s “Epic” sub-label. As the name deliberately fails to imply, this meant the place that non-mainstream (to […]
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Big Boxes: Orfeo Retools Kubelik
Although all of this live material has been released previously (and most of it also recorded by Kubelík commercially), this box is far from complete. There are no concertos, for example, and Orfeo released more Hartmann, a Handel Concerto Grosso, and choral works as well. Granted, this set features “symphonic recordings,” but it would have […]
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Big Boxes: Columbia’s Black Composers Series Is Back
In 1974 Columbia Masterworks, in association with the Afro-American Music Opportunities Association, launched a Black Composer Series. Nine LPs eventually appeared, all devoted to mostly world-premiere recordings of works by composers of color spanning nearly two centuries. Apparently no effort was spared to ensure world-class results regarding research, preparation, and performance, and the series met […]
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Back in Print: Peter Hurford’s Seminal Bach Survey On Argo/Decca
Peter Hurford’s traversal of Bach’s complete organ works has been out of print for years. As a result, all that I had to go by, for assessing Hurford’s take on that oeuvre—which, outside the cantatas, best shows Bach at his essence—was a well-loved, much-played best-selling Double Decca of “Bach: Great Organ Works”. It was among […]
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Gardiner’s Revolutionary Berlioz? Take The Good With The Ugly
Berlioz: “An acquired taste, but what a taste worth acquiring!” as David Hurwitz points out in his review of the “Philips 50” release of John Eliot Gardiner’s Messe solennelle. Indeed. And even if you think you’ve acquired the taste, Berlioz can still be unwieldy and brittle to the ears. In a way, this box of […]
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Big Boxes: A Lotta Great Handel Cantatas
There’s nothing more heartbreaking in surveying the current state of the classical music industry than the knowledge that, amidst the constant flow of useless dreck hitting the market daily, there are wonderful sets such as this one that will never receive the acclaim (and financial success) that they deserve because they will simply get lost […]
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Big Boxes: The Magnificent New Music String Quartet
In its eight years of existence from 1948 to 1956, the New Music String Quartet established itself as one of the finest American chamber ensembles of the post-war era, whose long-out-of-print recordings have been highly sought-out collector’s items, commanding steep prices from second-hand record dealers. All the more reason to welcome this complete, authorized, and […]
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A Big Box of Roussel, Wonder of Wonders
Every so often the major labels extrude a heap of stuff, seemingly by accident, that leads one to believe that a glimmer of intelligence lurks somewhere in the bowels of their corporate digestive systems. Here is one such. Warner has put together a big box of Erato/EMI Roussel recordings, and they’ve done it right. In […]
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Big Boxes: Sony’s 94-CD/3-DVD Zubin Mehta Collection
Sony/BMG’s Zubin Mehta Complete Columbia Album Collection opens with his recorded debut as the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s music director in excellently played versions of Respighi’s Feste romane and Richard Strauss’ Don Juan. The somewhat dry engineering, however, is a far cry from the far more robust and lifelike sonics that were a hallmark of Mehta’s […]
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Big Boxes: Paul Lewis’ Beethoven Cycles At Super-Budget Price
In anticipation of 2020’s Beethoven anniversary year, Harmonia Mundi has bundled together Paul Lewis’ respective Beethoven cycles devoted to the piano sonatas and piano concertos, along with the pianist’s Diabelli Variations. The concertos contain Lewis’ most consistently satisfying Beethoven playing on disc, which is free from the arch and fussy phrasings that occasionally seep through […]
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Big Boxes: Finally, The Complete Giulini On DG
In 2010 and 2011 Deutsche Grammophon brought out two “Giulini in America” slim-line boxes respectively devoted to the conductor’s Chicago Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic recordings (well, most of but not all of the latter). DG’s Italian branch later issued a generally well-chosen 16-CD “Art of Giulini” box. 2014 saw a 15-CD “Giulini in Vienna” […]
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Big Boxes: Bruno Walter’s Complete Columbia Albums
Like the previously released Szell edition from Sony, this is a big box done right. Not only do you get all of Bruno Walter’s Columbia albums, ideally remastered and in the best-ever sound to date, you also get his rehearsal discs, his numerous interviews (even the 1960 Vienna Festwochen one not originally on Columbia), special […]
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