Box Set Selections,
Boxed Set Selections - August 2020
August heavyweights include the first international release of the Smetana Quartet's Beethoven cycle from the 1970s and 80s, a 75th-birthday tribute to Itzhak Perlman on RCA/Columbia, and a collection of ten operas from the Salzburg Festival on DVD and Blu-ray.
Recorded between 1974 and 1985 and originally released on Nippon Columbia, the Czech string quartet’s complete Beethoven cycle (including the Grosse Fuge) here receives its first release outside Japan; the set is digitally remastered from the original analogue tapes, and includes a voucher for download in Hi-Res 24 bit/192 kHz.
Available Formats: 7 CDs, MP3, FLAC, Hi-Res FLAC, Hi-Res+ FLAC
The great Israeli-American violinist turns 75 on 31st August, and this 18-CD set gathers together all of the recordings which he made for RCA and CBS/Sony between 1965 and 2012, including the Prokofiev sonatas with Vladimir Ashkenazy, the Brahms sonatas with Daniel Barenboim, Mozart duos with Pinchas Zukerman, the Cinema Serenade albums with John Williams, and the complete soundtracks of Memoirs of a Geisha and Yimou Zhang’s Hero.
Available Format: 18 CDs
This anthology of stereo recordings from 1981-1995 includes Piano Concertos Nos. 5-27 (with David Zinman, Günter Wand, and Sir Neville Marriner), the complete piano sonatas, the Quintet for Piano and Winds (with the Bläserensemble Sabine Meyer), and the two Piano Quartets (with Tabea and Frank Peter Zimmermann and Tilmann Wick); reviewing the original release of the concertos, Gramophone described Zacharias as a ‘reliable, thoughtful and stylish’ Mozartian.
Available Format: 15 CDs
Shostakovich forms the mainstay of this 8CD set of recordings from the first half of the 1990s, with three discs of string quartets plus the Piano Quintet and Piano Trio No. 2; the collection also features music by Borodin, Tchaikovsky, Schnittke, Stravinsky, Glazunov, Shebalin and Vaynberg. Though of course none of the original members remain, the quartet celebrate their 75th anniversary this year.
Available Format: 8 CDs
Released to mark the centenary of the American pianist’s birth earlier this month, this 7-CD set of the recordings which he made for RCA Victor and Columbia Masterworks between 1950 and 1971, including Charles Ives’s Piano Sonata No. 1 (which Masselos premiered in 1949 after Lou Harrison reconstructed it from the original sketches), and music by Paul Bowles, Ben Weber, Justin Dello Joio, Copland, Satie, Brahms and Schumann. Remastered from the original analogue tapes using 24 bit / 192 kHz technology.
Available Format: 7 CDs
The eleven legendary voices on this 10-CD boxed set are Agnes Baltsa, Grace Bumbry, Franco Bonisolli, Brigitte Fassbaender, Krassimira Stoyanova, Edita Gruberová, Julia Varady, Adrianne Pieczonka, Piotr Beczała, and Carlo Bergonzi and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (heard together in scenes from Don Carlo, La forza del destino, I Vespri Siciliani, La bohème and Les Pêcheurs de Perles).
Available Formats: 10 CDs, MP3, FLAC
Released to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the Belgian-born soprano’s death, this 8-CD collection features lieder by Schumann, Schubert, Brahms, Wolf and Strauss, mélodies by Debussy, Gounod and Fauré, Berlioz’s Les Nuits d’été, cantatas by Bach and Schütz, and opera arias by Mozart, Charpentier, Verdi, Gluck, Massenet, Honegger and more. Much of the material receives its first outing on CD here.
Available Formats: MP3, FLAC
Following last month’s 58-CD box on Deutsche Grammophon, celebrations of the Festival’s centenary continue with this collection of 10 complete recent productions: Salome, The Makropulos Case, Der Rosenkavalier, Simon Boccanegra, Pique Dame, Fierrabras, Theodora, L’Italiana in Algeri, Die Zauberflöte, and Otello. Artists include Asmik Grigorian, Cecilia Bartoli, Angela Denoke, Matthias Goerne, Christine Schäfer, and Aleksandrs Antonenko.
Available Format: 17 DVD Videos
Salome, The Makropulos Case, Der Rosenkavalier, Simon Boccanegra, Pique Dame, Fierrabras, Theodora, L’Italiana in Algeri, Die Zauberflöte, and Otello.
Available Format: 10 Blu-rays
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