Mercury Living Presence Boxed Set

[Todd]

I await the day when some company releases a truly comprehensive box set.  Perhaps once the dust settles in corporate takeover world, something like EMI: The Complete Edition, with every EMI classical recording that made the transition to CD included.  Sure would be handy.

[Opus106]

I await the day when some company releases a truly comprehensive box set.  Perhaps once the dust settles in corporate takeover world, something like EMI: The Complete Edition, with every EMI classical recording that made the transition to CD included.  Sure would be handy.

And it should include every re-release in its original unoriginal cover as well.

[mc ukrneal]

This isn't over yet.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00B7364H2/?tag=goodmusicguideco-21

Here is a listing of the discs (in Japanese). I used google translate to get the listing in English (just copy and paste).

Here: http://tower.jp/item/3213039/Mercury-Living-Presence-Box-Vol-2

[Octave]

I await the day when some company releases a truly comprehensive box set.  Perhaps once the dust settles in corporate takeover world, something like EMI: The Complete Edition, with every EMI classical recording that made the transition to CD included.  Sure would be handy.

We will have passed through the looking glass when the shipping costs more than the box, and when the box must be installed and cannot be moved thereafter.  All the ungenerous suspicions about both the business and the tradition will thereby find their concrete form.

[bigshot]

i just got vol 2 in the mail the other day and there are some wonderful things in it. Dorati's Tchaikovsky 6 really packs a wallop. Lots of interesting Hanson conducted albums I've never heard.

[vandermolen]

I loved Howard Hanson's recordings of his own symphonies 1-3 on Mercury + the powerful Koussevitsky Elegy, Lament for Beowulf and Morton Gould's 'West Point Symphony. However they don't seem to be featured in the set.

[bigshot]

Yes they are included. This is volume 2. Just came out. Lots of Dorati Bartok and Paray French music too.

[Pat B]

Only 3 more discs left in box 2 for me!

Last night I listened to the Hanson Sym. 3 disc and heard a nasty buzzing sound in the Lament for Beowulf from 6:20 to 7:00. I've tried it on 3 different systems, and it happens on all of them. The disc looks pristine and besides, it's not the sort of noise that suggests a physical defect.

Over on amazon, none of the reviews of the box mention it. A reviewer of the mp3 version of that individual disc heard the same thing but other reviewers apparently didn't.

Does anybody else have this problem from the box?

[Todd]

Dream on.  What is probably coming, and may already be here, is all the EMI classical CDs available for streaming.  A Cloud subscription to all of a label's rep would be interesting.

That seems most likely, though I would be surprised if EMI, or any label, transfers all recordings issued on CD to streaming services.  Just as recordings were lost when moving from 78s to LP, and from LP to CD, some recordings will be lost, at least commercially.  One would think that moving from digital to digital would be easy enough, but probably not. 

[Parsifal]

What I would wish for as a successor to MLP-II would be MLP-M (the mono recordings).

A fair slice of the stereo catalog has been made available, and a significant fraction of the CD releases made it into the boxs.  But only a few of the Mono recordings have been released on CD, and there are many, many superb mono releases which are unreleased.  I have several on LP, such as Schuman Ballet music, conducted by the composer and by Robert Whitney, Loeffler and Griffes by Hanson and Rochester, and Brahms by Paul Paray.  Gorgeous stuff and I think there are people who would spring for it if they would only bother to run the tapes and transfer to CD.