111 Years of Deutsche Grammophon - The Collector's Edition 1 [Box set, Collector's Edition, Limited Edition]

 

 

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This is a pretty good anthology covering just under sixty years of activity at Deutsche Grammophon. 111 years? Well, the earliest recording in this collection is Furtwaengler's 1951 Haydn G major symphony, but we get the picture. This well-designed box is a grab bag of classical bestsellers, most of them critically praised, with a generous sampling of the superstar performers du jour (Lang, Hahn, Dudamel, etc.). Unless you're a classical music novice, you'll already have several of the albums in this box. You'll also be getting a lot of music you haven't heard yet, and at a great price.

It's inevitable that a lot would be missing from DG's 55-disc survey, and in this case there's no music at all by Bruckner, Sibelius, Grieg, Prokofiev, Rossini, or Shostakovich, and Wagner is represented only by two arias from "Tannhauser." Chamber music is barely touched upon and contemporary music, apart from a couple of piano pieces by Corigliano and Part, is ignored. What's included is the complete Monteverdi Vespers (Gardiner), the complete Chopin Nocturnes (Pires), Bach's complete cello suites (Fournier) and the B minor Mass (Karl Richter), and a fascinating package tour of everything from Scarlatti keyboard sonatas and symphonic Rameau arrangements to "West Side Story" and a string quartet version of "The Art of Fugue." Not bad for a basic music library in a box. Not bad at all.

An illustrated 140-page booklet contains a brief history of Deutsche Grammophon in English, German, and French as well as personnel and track listings for each CD, but no liner notes on the music and no song texts. I prefer to see this as a compliment to the listener.

Here's a list of the contents:

1. Brahms: 21 Hungarian Dances (Claudio Abbado/Vienna Philharmonic, 1982)
2. Beethoven: String Quartet in F, op.59/1; Quartet in C# minor, op.131 (Amadeus Quartet, 1959/1963)
3. Chopin: 24 Preludes, op.28; Prelude in C# minor, op.45; Prelude in A flat major, op.post.; Piano Sonata no.2
in B flat minor (Martha Argerich, 1974/1975/1977)
4. Ravel: Bolero; Pavane pour une infante defunte; La Valse; Daphnis & Chloe, suite no.2
(Danel Barenboim/Orchestre de Paris, 1981)
5. Debussy: Preludes, book 1; Images, bks. 1 & 2 (Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, 1971/1978)
6. Bernstein: West Side Story (Kiri Te Kanawa, Jose Carreras/Leonard Bernstein, 1984)
7. Mozart: Requiem, K.626 (Edith Mathis, Julia Hamari, Wieslaw Ochman, Karl Ridderbusch/Karl Boehm/Vienna
Philharmonic, 1971)
8. Stravinsky: Petrouchka; Le Sacre du Printemps (Pierre Boulez/Cleveland Orchestra, 1991)
9. Vivaldi: Violin Concertos (Giuliano Carmignola/Andrea Marcon/Venice Baroque Orchestra, 2006)
10. "Opera Gala" - Donizetti, Verdi, Halevy, Meyerbeer, Bizet (Placido Domingo/Carlo Maria Giulini/Los Angeles
Philharmonic, 1980)
11. Mahler: Symphony no.5 (Gustavo Dudamel/Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela, 2006)
12. Bach: The Art of Fugue (Emerson String Quartet, 2003)
13. Schubert: Winterreise (Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau/Gerald Moore, 1971)
14/15. Bach: Cello Suites (Pierre Fournier, 1960)
16. Verdi: Requiem (Maria Stader, Marianna Radev, Helmut Krebs, Kim Borg/Ferenc Fricsay/RIAS SO Berlin, 1953)
17. Schumann: Symphony no.4 in D minor; Haydn: Symphony no.88 in G major (Wilhelm Furtwaengler, 1953/1951)
18/19. Monteverdi: Vespro della Beata Vergine (Ann Monoyios, Marinella Pennicchi, Michael Chance, Mark Tucker,
Nigel Robson, Sandro Naglia, Bryn Terfel, Alastair Miles/John Eliot Gardner/English Baroque Soloists,
1989)
20. Beethoven: Piano Sonatas "Waldstein," "Les Adieux" and "Appassionata" (Emil Gilels, 1972/1973/1974)
21. "Baroque Favorites" - Pachelbel, Handel, Vivaldi, J.S. Bach (Reinhard Goebel/Musica Antiqua Koeln, 1982/1983)
22. "Credo" - Corigliano, Beethoven, Part (Helene Grimaud/Esa-Pekka Salonen/Swedish Radio SO & Choir, 2003)
23. Bach: Violin Concertos (Hilary Hahn/Jeffrey Kahane/Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, 2002/2003)
24. "Horowitz in Moscow" - Scarlatti, Mozart, Rachmaninov, Scriabin, Liszt, Chopin, Schumann, Moszkowski
(Vladimir Horowitz, 1986)
25. Orff: Carmina Burana (Gundula Janowitz, Gerhard Stolze, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau/Eugen Jochum/German Opera
Berlin Chorus & Orchestra, 1967)
26. Beethoven: Coriolan Overture; Symphony no.9 in D minor (Gundula Janowitz, Hilde Roessel-Majdan, Waldemar
Kmentt, Walter Berry/Herbert von Karajan/Berlin Philharmonic, 1965/1962)
27. Beethoven: Piano Concertos nos. 4 & 5 (Wilhelm Kempff/Ferdinand Leitner/Berlin Philharmonic, 1961)
28. Beethoven: Symphony no.5 in C minor; Symphony no.7 in A major (Carlos Kleiber/Vienna Philharmonic, 1974/
1975/1976)
29. "Ah! mio cor - Handel Arias" (Magdalena Kozena/Andrea Marcon/Venice Baroque Orchestra, 2006)
30. Dvorak: Symphony no.8 in G major; Symphony no.9 in E minor (Rafael Kubelik/Berlin Philharmonic, 1966/1972)
31. Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto no.1; Mendelssohn: Piano Concerto no.1 (Lang Lang/Daniel Barenboim/Chicago
Symphony, 2003)
32. Mendelssohn: Symphony no.4 in A major; Symphony no.5 in D major (Lorin Maazel/Berlin Philharmonic, 1960/1961)
33. "Adagio" - Saint-Saens, Faure, Resphigi, Dvorak, Glazunov, Tchaikovsky, Bruch, Strauss, Haydn (Mischa
Maisky/Semyon Bychkov/Orchestre de Paris, 1991)
34. Berlioz: Symphonie fantastique; overtures by Cherubini and Auber (Igor Markevitch/Orchestre Lamoureux, 1961)
35. Praetorius: Christmas Mass (Paul McCresh/Gabrieli Consort & Players, 1993)
36. Rameau: "Une symphonie imaginaire" (Marc Minkowski/Les Musiciens du Louvre, 2003)
37. Brahms: Violin Concerto in D major; Double Concerto in A minor (Anne-Sophie Mutter/Herbert von Karajan/
Berlin Philharmonic, 1981/1983)
38. "Opera Arias" - Mozart, Berlioz, Massenet, Donizetti, Bellini, Gounod, Dvorak, Puccini (Anna Netrebko/
Gianandrea Noseda/Vienna Philharmonic, 2003)
39. Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto; Wieniawski, Sarasate: music for 2 violins (David Oistrakh/Igor Oistrakh/
Franz Konwitschny/Gewandhausorchester Leipzig, 1954/1957)
40. "Lamenti" - Monteverdi, Bertali, Legrenzi, Vivaldi, Purcell, Piccinini (Anne Sofie von Otter/Reinhard
Goebel/Musica Antiqua Koeln, 1997)
41. Vivaldi: The Four Seasons (Simon Standage/Trevor Pinnock/English Concert, 1981/1985)
42/43. Chopin: Nocturnes (complete) (Maria Joao Pires, 1995/1996)
44. Scarlatti: Keyboard Sonatas (Ivo Pogorelich, 1991)
45. Chopin: Etudes, opp.10 & 25 (Maurizio Pollini, 1972)
46. "German Opera Arias" - Lortzing, Weber, Wagner, Strauss (Thomas Quasthoff/Christian Thielemann/Chorus &
Orchestra of the German Opera Berlin, 2001)
47/48. Bach: Mass in B minor (Maria Stader, Herta Toepper, Ernst Haefliger, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau/Karl
Richter/Munich Bach Chorus & Orchestra, 1961)
49. Rachmaninov: Piano concerto no.2; six Preludes (Sviatoslav Richter/Stanislaw Wislocki/Warsaw National
Philharmonic Orchestra, 1959)
50. Dvorak: Cello concerto in B minor; Tchaikovsky: Variations on a Rococo Theme (Mstislav Rostropovich/Herbert
von Karajan/Berlin Philharmonic, 1968)
51. "The Vagabond" - Vaughan Williams, Finzi, Butterworth, Ireland (Bryn Terfel/Malcolm Martineau, 1995)
52. "Cielo e mar" - Ponchielli, Cilea, Mercadante, Boito, Pietri, Gomes, Verdi, Donizetti (Rolando Villazon/
Daniele Callegari/Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi, 2007)
53. Bach: Organ works (Helmut Walcha, 1956/1962)
54. Schumann: Dichterliebe; Beethoven & Schubert: Lieder (Fritz Wunderlich/Hubert Giesen, 1965/1966)
55. Liszt: Piano Concertos 1 & 2; Totentanz (Krystian Zimerman/Seiji Ozawa/Boston Symphony Orchestra, 1987)

I was going to be negative about some of the choice of repertoire, but in the end decided that the quality of what we get here is so high I would just say that this set has given me enormous pleasure and it has been good to explore one or two composers that I would not normally listen to safe in the knowledge that the performances (and recording quality) are top notch. I have been collecting CDs ever since they came out and now have several hundred. Amazingly, I only had a couple of the discs in this set: this is probably due to the fact that many of them whilst acknowledged as being good recordings have tended to be sold at full price -even when several decades old -although this is also true of discs by many of the current crop of artists on the yellow label. The set therefore also represents very good value, but unusually for me I think it is the artistic merit of the set which is more important on this occasion: all in all a fantastic showcase and celebration not only for a particular record company but for Western classical music in general.

A great collection of recordings. Already had several of these in my collection but quite happy with the purchase nonetheless. Have not heard a single disappointing disc yet and have gone through at least half of them already. Truly fantastic set for the price. See the DG website for full info on recordings included in the set. Enjoy!

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