Box Set Selections,
Boxed Set Selections - June 2020
June’s anthologies include a monumental tribute to Sir John Barbirolli from Warner Classics, Rudolf Serkin in Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms on Deutsche Grammophon, seven Russian operas recorded in former Yugoslavia in the 1950s, and collections celebrating Jascha Horenstein and Rudolf Schock.
Comprising everything which Barbirolli recorded for HMV and PYE, this 109-disc box is released to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the great conductor’s death, which falls next month. Spanning a period of more than four decades and remastered in high definition, the recordings include most of Elgar’s and Delius’s major orchestral works, the complete Brahms symphonies, and Barbirolli’s late, great Sibelius cycle with the Hallé.
Available Format: 109 CDs
The great American pianist signed with Deutsche Grammophon relatively late in his career, and this 15-CD original-jacket collection brings together three of his major recording projects for the Yellow Label: 15 Mozart concertos with Claudio Abbado and the London Symphony Orchestra, Beethoven’s last three sonatas, and the Brahms cello sonatas with Mstislav Rostropovich.
Available Format: 9 CDs
ORFEO 40th Anniversary Edition: Legendary Conductors
Sir John Barbirolli, Karl Böhm, Wolfgang Sawallisch, Carlos Kleiber et al
Recorded between 1951 and 1991, the repertoire here includes Prokofiev from Dimitri Mitropoulos, Bruckner from Wolfgang Sawallisch and Wilhelm Furtwängler, Tchaikovsky from Ferenc Fricsay, Beethoven from Herbert von Karajan and Carlos Kleiber, Liszt from Sergiu Celibidache, and Brahms and Vaughan Williams from Sir John Barbirolli.
Available Formats: 10 CDs, MP3, FLAC
A 10-CD collection including Mahler’s Symphonies Nos. 1 & 3 and Kindertotenlieder, Janáček’s Sinfonietta and Taras Bulba, Schoenberg’s Chamber Symphony Op. 9 and Verklärte Nacht, Strauss’s Don Juan and Tod und Verklärung, and Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler. Soloists include Claudio Arrau in Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 1, David Oistrakh in Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy, and Vlado Perlemuter in the Ravel piano concertos.
Available Format: 10 CDs
National Theatre Belgrade: Great Russian Operas from 1955
Belgrade National Opera, Krešimir Baranović, Oskar Danon
This 22-disc set features seven Russian operas recorded by Decca over a period of less than three weeks in February 1955: Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin and Pique Dame, Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov and Khovanshchina, Glinka’s Ivan Susanin, Borodin’s Prince Igor, and Rimsky-Korsakov’s The Snow Maiden. As a bonus, there is Massenet’s Don Quichotte, sung in French and recorded in the mid-1960s.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
The great German tenor is captured in his prime here on five complete recordings of Italian operas sung in German: Rigoletto under Ferenc Fricsay, La forza del destino under Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt, Tosca under Wilhelm Schüchter, L’elisir d’amore under Ernst Märzendorfer, and Cavalleria rusticana under Heinrich Hollreiser. The other singers include Gottlob Frick, Gustav Neidlinger, Martha Mödl and Carla Martinis.
Available Formats: 11 CDs, MP3, FLAC
Chris O'Reilly - Chief Executive
