Box Set Selections,
Boxed Set Selections - July 2024
This month's heavyweights include Joan Sutherland's recital and oratorio recordings for Decca, a centenary celebration of Tatiana Nikolayeva, fine Czech performances of Smetana's complete operas on Supraphon, the Juilliard String Quartet's collected Schoenberg recordings, Carlos Kleiber's small but perfectly-formed discography on Deutsche Grammophon, and Hansjörg Albrecht's survey of Bruckner's symphonies in transcriptions for organ.
This collection of the Australian coloratura soprano's complete recitals and oratorio recordings for Decca features her very first studio recording (Bliss’s A Song of Welcome, from 1954), with other rarities including an all-Wagner disc, a recently-discovered set of French songs, and four recordings with Richard Bonynge from 1958 which appear on Decca for the first time. The set also includes celebrated albums such as The Art of the Prima Donna, a 1959 operatic recital from Paris with Nello Santi, and Live from Lincoln Center (with Marilyn Horne and Luciano Pavarotti), plus the Verdi Requiem with Sir Georg Solti and two recordings of Handel's Messiah (conducted by Boult and Bonynge).
Available Format: 37 CDs
Issued to mark the Year of Czech Music and the bicentenary of Smetana's birth, these recordings of his eight completed operas (plus the Twelfth Night-inspired fragment Viola) were made in Prague and Brno between 1960 and 1983. Zdeněk Košler conducts The Bartered Bride, The Secret and Libuše, František Jílek The Two Widows, Zdeněk Chalabala The Devil's Wall, František Vajnar The Kiss, Jaroslav Krombholc Dalibor, and Jan Hus Tichý The Brandenburgers in Bohemia. (More on this one from our guest-contributor Rob Cowan next month...)
Available Format: 17 CDs
Released to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the Moravian-American pianist's death, this collection of his recordings for Deutsche Grammophon, British & American Decca and Westminster includes previously-unreleased accounts of Mozart's Dupont Variations and Schubert's Piano Sonata No. 21 in B flat from 1963, a 1960 recording of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition which Gramophone's Bryce Morrison described as displaying 'the highest musicality caught, as it were, on the wing', Beethoven violin sonatas with Erica Morini, and of course a substantal selection of works by Janáček.
Available Format: 12 CDs
Made between 1972 and 1975, the recordings on this limited-edition 8-CD set include the Spanish pianist's accounts of Schumann's Kreisleriana, Chopin's Scherzi and Liszt's Piano Sonata, plus concertos by Chopin, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff with his regular collaborator Edo de Waart and a newly remastered album of Rachmaninoff from 1973 (featuring a selection of Preludes and Études-Tableaux as well as the transcription of Kreisler's Liebesleid). The booklet includes a tribute to Orozco's artistry by Jed Distler.
Available Format: 8 CDs
Carlos Kleiber: Complete Recordings On Deutsche Grammophon
Wiener Philharmoniker, Bayerisches Staatsorchester, Staatskapelle Dresden, Carlos Kleiber
Although the studio was not Kleiber's preferred environment (he once opined that 'every unproduced record is a good record'), but the few recordings which he was persuaded to make occupy a special place in the catalogue. This 12-CD set comprises Beethoven's Symphonies Nos. 5 and 7, Brahms's Symphony No. 4, Schubert's Symphonies Nos. 2 and 8, and four complete operas: Strauss's Die Fledermaus (with Hermann Prey, Julia Varady and Lucia Popp), Wagner's Tristan und Isolde (with René Kollo and Margaret Price), Verdi's La traviata (with Ileana Cotrubas, Plácido Domingo and Sherrill Milnes), and Weber's Der Freischütz (with Peter Schreier, Gundula Janowitz and Edith Mathis).
Available Format: 12 CDs + Blu-ray Audio
Curated from the Deutsche Grammophon and Decca catalogues by Bruckner expert Harry Gruber, this celebration of the composer's bicentenary showcases the Wiener Philharmoniker under nine different conductors: Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Muti, Bernard Haitink, Karl Böhm, Lorin Maazel, Horst Stein, Herbert von Karajan, Pierre Boulez, and Carlo Maria Giulini.
Available Format: 9 CDs
Issued to mark the centenary of the Soviet pianist's birth, this 40-disc spans her entire recording career (from the 1950s to the 1990s). The repertoire includes the majority of JS Bach's solo keyboard works, concertos by Mozart, Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Bartók and Medtner, relative rarities by Golubev and Liadov, three of Nikolayeva's own Concert Études from the early 1950s, and two recordings of the 24 Preludes and Fugues which Shostakovich composed for her at around the same time.
Available Format: 43 CDs
Formed in 1946, the Juilliard Quartet were early champions of Schoenberg's music, and in 1953 became the first ensemble to record his complete string quartets; in addition to the four numbered quartets, this set includes the early String Quartet in D major from 1897 (which was supervised by Zemlinsky and viewed with approval by Brahms), the String Trio Op. 45 from 1946, the satirical Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte from 1942, and the original string sextet version of Verklärte Nacht. Their guests include Yo-Yo Ma (in Verklärte Nacht), Glenn Gould (in the Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte), and the sopranos Uta Graf and Benita Valente (in two accounts of String Quartet No. 2).
Available Format: 7 CDs
Recorded at venues including the Wiener Konzerthaus & Musikverein, Westminster Cathedral, the Brucknerhaus Linz and Lucerne's Hofkirche, this is the first complete set of Bruckner's symphonies in transcriptions for organ; the transcriptions themselves are the work of Erwin Horn and Thomas Schmögner, and the set also features new Bruckner-inspired works by composers including David Matthews, Philipp Maintz and Françoise Choveaux. Albrecht's interpretations have been praised for their 'sumptuous palette of orchestral colours' (Choir & Organ) and 'polished and persuasive musicianship' (Gramophone), whilst MusicWeb International hailed the project as 'a tremendous achievement'.
Available Formats: 13 CDs, MP3, FLAC/ALAC/WAV
Chris O'Reilly - Chief Executive
