Favourites,
Gifts for... Exploring classical music's great composers
In our second gift guide we've picked out some highlights from the latest composer box sets, books and sheet music collections: whether you're looking for a deluxe complete edition of recordings or scores, an anniversary box set, or a recent biography of a composer or artist, you'll find something to excite every classical music collector. (You can find our other themed gift guides here.)
2019 Anniversary Box Sets
Assembled to mark the 150th anniversary of the composer’s death in March this year, this first-ever complete Berlioz edition includes John Nelson’s multi-award-winning 2017 recording of Les Troyens, Riccardo Muti’s Roméo et Juliette, Kent Nagano’s La damnation de Faust, and new recordings of songs by up-and-coming sopranos Elsa Dreisig and Sabine Devieilhe.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
Released to mark the composer’s bicentenary this June, this 30-CD box includes complete performances of Orphée aux Enfers, Les contes d’Hoffmann, La Vie Parisienne and La belle Hélène in both French and German, plus highlights from rarities such as Les Brigands, Pomme d’Api, Monsieur Choufleur and Mesdames de la Halle, and Six Fables de La Fontaine.
Available Format: 30 CDs
New Beethoven Editions for his 250th Birthday in 2020
Warner Classics’s complete Beethoven edition draws on their rich catalogue, with a focus on complete cycles by a particular artist or ensemble. You’ll find celebrated interpretations from Nikolaus Harnoncourt, András Schiff, Itzhak Perlman, and Stephen Kovacevich, among others, as well as a number of works recorded specially for this collection. A richly illustrated booklet, with a complete index of Beethoven’s works and notes by David Wyn Jones completes the edition.
Available Format: 80 CDs
Naxos are also celebrating next year’s Beethoven anniversary, with an edition encompassing his complete works across all genres. Artists featured include Boris Giltburg, the Kodály Quartet, Herbert Blomstedt, and Hermann Prey, as well as a number of fresh interpreters, and the collection features a host of fragments, sketches, arrangements and transcriptions which have never before been recorded.
Available Format: 90 CDs
Other Favourite 2019 Box Sets
Fritz Brun: Complete Orchestral Works
Moscow Symphony Orchestra, Bratislava Symphony Orchestra, Adriano
Born in Lucerne in 1878, the Swiss conductor and composer wrote ten symphonies (though only three were published during his lifetime, and the First receives its premiere recording here), which draw on influences as diverse as Beethoven, Stravinsky, and Swiss folk music; this set also includes the 1946 Piano Concerto, Overture to a Jubilee Celebration (composed for the opening of a new concert-Hall in Bern in 1950), and the late Rhapsody for Orchestra.
Available Format: 11 CDs
Recorded between 1976 and 2016, this 23-CD box covers all of the Belgian composer’s major works and a huge amount of rarities, including the large-scale oratorios Les Béatitudes and Les Sept Paroles du Christ en Croix, the symphonic poems Les Djinns and Les Éolides, the unpublished opera Stradella, and a generous selection of mélodies.
Available Format: 23 CDs
This 25-CD collection explores Edvard Grieg’s wide ranging compositions, spanning orchestral works, chamber and instrumental music, and songs. It covers all his major works, including Peer Gynt, the Holberg Suite and his Piano Concerto alongside numerous lesser known pieces, in performances by artists and ensembles including Jorge Bolet, Håkon Austbø, the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields and the Malmö Symphony Orchestra.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
Recorded under supervision of the composer and originally released on single albums in the mid-1990s, Sony Classical’s Ligeti Edition includes Esa-Pekka Salonen’s recording of Le Grand Macabre, the Études and Musica ricercata from Pierre-Laurent Aimard, the String Quartets from the Arditti Quartet, and the Nonsense Madrigals from The King’s Singers.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
An 11-CD set comprising all of the French composer’s major works (including the four symphonies, the ballet-suites Le Festin de l'araignée and Bacchus et Ariane, and the opera Pâdmavatî), a substantial helping of his songs and chamber music, and a disc of historical rarities including several CD premieres and appearances by the composer as pianist and conductor.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
The Tchaikovsky Project: Complete Symphonies & Piano Concertos, Orchestral Works
Kirill Gerstein (piano), Czech Philharmonic, Semyon Bychkov
As well as the complete symphonies and newly-recorded three piano concertos, this set includes the Serenade for Strings, Francesca da Rimini, and Romeo and Juliet; the latter work and Symphony No. 6 were originally released in 2016 and were shortlisted for a Gramophone Award, whilst The Sunday Times declared that Manfred (first released in 2017) has ‘rarely been played with such conviction on disc’.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
New Composer Biographies
Handel in London tells the story of a young German composer who, in 1712, follows his princely master to London and would remain there for the rest of his life. At the heart of musical activity in London for the next four decades, Handel composed masterpiece after masterpiece for the city. Conductor Jane Glover draws on her profound understanding of music to tell the story of some of the most remarkable music ever written, music that has been played and sung, and loved, in this country - and throughout the world - for three hundred years.
Available Format: Book
Richard Strauss's works are present in the repertories of concert halls and opera houses worldwide. The details of the composer's life, however, remain shrouded in mystery and gossip. Laurenz Lütteken presents a fresh approach to understanding this elusive composer's life and works. Dispensing with stereotypes and sensationalism, it reveals Strauss to be a sensitive intellectual and representative of modernity.
Available Format: Book
Other New Books
It's time to put your knowledge of classical music to the test with this collection of questions and puzzles designed to challenge, to entertain, and to educate. Blending together basic trivia, complex wordplay and a range of visual teasers, this book provides hours of music-themed challenges, with difficulty levels varying from pleasantly tricky to fiendishly hard.
Available Format: Book
Whether you already love classical music or you're just beginning to explore it, this guide will take you on a journey through more than a thousand years, charting the evolution of instruments, styles, and genres. Biographies of major and lesser-known composers offer rich insights into their music and the historical and cultural contexts that influenced their genius. Timelines, quotes, and colour photographs give a voice to this music and the exceptionally gifted individuals who created it.
Available Format: Book
In 2011, in his role as the chief classical music critic for the New York Times, Anthony Tommasini wrote a series in which he cheekily set out to determine the all-time top ten composers, with help from readers. Now he offers his own personal guide to the canon, and what greatness really means in classical music. To make his case, Tommasini draws on elements of biography, the anxiety of influence, the composer's relationships with colleagues, and shifting attitudes toward a composer's work over time.
Available Format: Book
Deluxe Sheet Music Editions
After years of intensive research, Breitkopf's edition of the complete organ works of Johann Sebastian Bach has finally been completed and have been brought together in this complete set. These new publications reflect more recent scholarly research, as well as aspects of historically-informed performance practice and each volume contains an introduction and comments evaluating the sources. Furthermore, Breitkopf take into account the needs of performers, giving thought to more practical matters such as convenient page turns and an easily legible layout.
Available Format: Sheet Music
The complete sacred vocal works of Johann Sebastian Bach are contained in this edition. Consisting of 23 volumes in three slip case boxes, the editions are presented in a reader-friendly format suitable for conducting. Alongside Carus Verlag's high quality editions and presentation, each volume is structured in a user-friendly format; a beautiful addition to any Bach library.
Available Format: Sheet Music
This set brings together Jonathan Del Mar's renowned editions of Beethoven's symphonies, published by Bärenreiter, in nine study score volumes. Praised by academics and conductors alike, these scholarly-critical editions correct numerous errors that crept into the first edition, and provide new insights into the workings of these extraordinary symphonies.
Available Format: Sheet Music
Doblinger's Haydn edition is carefully edited by renowned Haydn specialists Reginald Barrett-Ayres and HC Robbins Landon. This specially priced box-set collection of Haydn's complete string quartets contains 13 study score volumes in Doblinger's new critical edition.
Available Format: Sheet Music
This box set from Bärenreiter compiles scholarly-critical editions of all Mozart's 41 symphonies, into 4 compact study score volumes. It presents the Urtext of the New Mozart Edition, and each volume contains introductions to the symphonies discussing each work's dating, orchestration, sources and performance history in German and English. An appendix contains two spurious works attributed to Mozart.
Available Format: Sheet Music
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