Box Set Selections,
Boxed Set Selections - December 2019
December heavyweights include Moura Lympany’s newly remastered complete Decca recordings, a 25-CD anthology of Russian chamber music on Brilliant Classics, and works by Haydn, Mozart and Boccherini from Karl Münchinger and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra.
Featuring concertos by Grieg, Schumann, Liszt and Khachaturian and solo works by Chopin, Rachmaninov, Poulenc and Balakirev, this 7-CD set includes previously unreleased material such as a 1947 studio recording of Chopin’s Piano Sonata No. 3 and live broadcasts of Alan Rawsthorne’s First Piano Concerto (under Adrian Boult) and Samuel Barber’s Piano Sonata.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
Karl Münchinger - The Classical Legacy
Wiener Philharmoniker, Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, Karl Münchinger
This anthology picks up where last month's The Baroque Legacy left off with six recordings of Haydn symphonies from the late 1950s and early 60s, followed by works including Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto, Eine kleine Nachtmusik, Ein Musikalischer Spass and ‘Paris’ and ‘Haffner’ symphonies, and Boccherini and Haydn cello concertos with Pierre Fournier.
Available Formats: 8 CDs, MP3, FLAC
Felix Mendelssohn Edition
Artists include Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Christian Gerhaher, Helmuth Rilling, Thomas Fey
This 56-CD collection is an expanded version of an earlier Hänssler set, and includes a more comprehensive selection of the piano music (played by Romanian pianist Dana Protopopescu), chamber works and lieder as well as the complete symphonies, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Elias, Paulus, Athalia and Die erste Walpurgisnacht.
Available Format: 56 CDs
Reviewing this set earlier this month, Gramophone praised the Cypriot pianist’s ‘fastidious and mindful artistry‘ and in particular his ‘scrupulous attention to Beethoven’s subito dynamics and unpredictable accents’; the recordings were made at the Leipzig Gewandhaus and are presented in chronological order of composition.
Available Formats: 16 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC
The Belgian fortepianist Jan Vermeulen was crowned Flanders Musician of the Year in the wake of his cycle of Schubert’s complete solo piano works back in 2010, a series which was praised by International Piano for ‘captur[ing] most poignantly the emotionally changeable nature of Schubert’s music throughout his short life’; he embarked on this survey of the complete music for four hands back in 2014, with his former pupil Veerle Peeters as his partner.
Available Format: 7 CDs
This celebration of the Swiss tenor (and father of the pianist Andreas Haefliger) includes complete recordings of Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin and Janáček’s The Diary of One Who Disappeared as well as excerpts from some of his key operatic roles (ranging from Mozart’s Tamino and Belmonte to Beethoven’s Florestan), and Stravinsky’s Psalmus Hungaricus and Kodály’s Psalmus Hungaricus.
Available Format: 10 CDs
Chris O'Reilly - Chief Executive
