How satisfied are you with those big box purchases?

[Parsifal]

@ North Star

I see no sense in paying for a boxed set if you are only interested in a small part of the contents and prepared to leave the rest of the set unlistened to, I have yet to see a boxed set of say 6 CDs that are cheaper than a single purchase of one or even two of the CDs.

Evidently you are mathematically challenged. Let me give you an example. Suppose I wanted three recordings of Ivo Pogolerich, his Brahms disc, his Chopin Concerto #2 disc, and his Chopin Sonata No 2 disc. The original releases (using amazon.com pricing) are about $14 each, so that would cost me about $42. The Boxed set, Complete Recordings of Ivo Pogolerich, a 13 CD set, is $34. If I buy that set I get the three discs I want, 10 other discs that I might listen to, and save $8. See how that works?

With the current pricing of box sets, this is not an unusual situation.

[Andante]

I think one can trust the GMG members to be able to do the little maths that is necessary.

With big boxes we are usually talking about 1-3 $/EUR per disc. Take the Hogwood Haydn. They put all of it (except for the BBC disc with 76/77) in one box for 50-60 EUR. This is about/less than 2 EUR/disc. And these are brand new. If you want to get the 10 3 disc boxes and the two singles separately you will often have to be content with used ones because they have long been oop. These older 3-disc boxes might be findable used around 10 EUR each volume sometimes but for other volumes one will have to pay 20-30 and always run the risk of getting a used copy in less than good shape. Let's say I want 4 of the 10 old boxes. Even if I am lucky and get them around 15 EUR each and thus end up at the same price as the new big box, I'd obviously get a much better deal if I get the big box for roughly the same money.

(And even better the combined one, the mixed Brüggen/Hogwood that is at 47 (less than 1.4 EUR/disc), so it is even cheaper and I am almost tempted but I have too much of it already).

I assume all of these sets are Amazon deals?  They are cheap I have not seen this kind of deal offered locally, if some prices had been provided in the original post I would have understood. The best deals I have seen in stores work out to approx 40% per CD of individual price. We used to be able to get individual CDs for as little as US$ 0.69 they were I understand redundant stock from the EU.

[Andante]

Evidently you are mathematically challenged.

How nice of you to say so, and yet you seem to manage so well.

[Ken B]

Seems pretty clear to me that it makes sense in these cases.

Oh, oh, careful parsing. Unfair!

[Madiel]

Sigh.

Andante, you cannot assume that all the recordings someone wants are on 1 or 2 discs within a box. They might be scattered all over the box.

That is where your maths doesn't work.

[Jo498]

FWIW the Hogwood Haydn box is $86 at amazon.com and the "mixed" box only about $52 (it is really an incredible bargain). Whereas the elusive BBC disc of symphonies 77/78 commands around §30 on the used market. If someone really wants the latter, he cannot do better than get the "mixed box". If I was a) more fond of Hogwood's Haydn (I tend to prefer Goodman, Solomons, Pinnock and other HIPsters if available) and b) did not already own all the Brüggen and about 10 discs of the Hogwood, I would have bought the mixed box (I might even have made money because the Brüggen box is rare used).

Granted, the supercheap boxes with only around $2/disc or sometimes less are a fairly recent phenomenon. But in the 1990s and early 2000s the moderately sized boxes, like DG's Original masters etc. were sometimes the *only* option to get some (historical or older) recordings AT ALL. Unless one would take used LPs as an option (and even this would have been often more expensive and much more of a hazzle than just getting a decently priced (around $5-7/disc) box).

[Andante]

Sigh.

Andante, you cannot assume that all the recordings someone wants are on 1 or 2 discs within a box. They might be scattered all over the box.

That is where your maths doesn't work.

Oh golly gosh, that's brilliant, I feel so privileged to be in the same place with such intelligence.

[Madiel]

Are you completely oblivious to the fact that I spent several posts supporting and explaining your basic position, before you decided that being sarcastic was the way you wanted to handle this?

[Ken B]

Andante,

Last year I bought the big Abbado box of symphonies. It cost less than just the Abbado box of Mahler. But I really don't care about the early Schubert Symphonies, nor Mahler's 8th. So I ignore those discs. I wouldn't have bought the Mozart symphonies separately, but I liked them so incredibly well once I got the big box that I bought the smaller 8 disc Abbado Mozart box, despite the 3 duplicates, and for about the cost of 2 of the remaining discs separately. Wasteful me.

Tell me why my purchases made no economic sense.

[Andante]

Are you completely oblivious to the fact that I spent several posts supporting and explaining your basic position, before you decided that being sarcastic was the way you wanted to handle this?

Orfeo,  I apologise, I shot from the lip.
The original statement from "The new erato" was "I often buy boxes because I am interested in only a small part of the contents and am happy to leave the rest in the box unlistened" etc. this is what I have been taking issue with all along I know you pointed out that "small" was not helpful and should have been quantified but so should the prices involved as this makes a difference.
Re your post, It just did not seem plausible to me that someone would buy a boxed set of say 6-10 CDs because they wanted some small part of a work that was on each of the CDs. Highly unlikely.
As I said in an earlier post I personally look for the best recording available at the time, I avoid boxed sets because mostly they contain perhaps a couple of good recordings with the rest being ordinary at best, I would consider a purchase if the set is a couple of dollars or a freebie.
I still maintain that at normal prices (not clearance sale price) it makes no sense to me economically.

[André]

Sometimes there are surprises a'plenty in a box that seems unpromising at first. Examples abound (or maybe I was insanely lucky ).

The DGG Karl Böhm "Late Recordings" - who would think Karrrrlllll Böööhmm in his last years would provide delights and illuminations for the music lover ? Well, if you think you know Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, Bruckner and Mozart well, then maybe a listen to these extremely individual interpretations will make you realize that things are not so simple - and settled - after all.

And Seiji Ozawa ? Or James Levine ?

I have theses boxes and value them not only for the truly remarkable interpretations therein, but also (collectively) for the insights into the music-making of some of the major interpreters of our era.

Recently (Summer 2016), on a French web site there was a blind test of over 30 interpretations of Bartok's MSPC, spanning a good 60 years of recording history (with all the usual hungarian suspects included). Who went on to capture the approbation of the participants ? Levine and the Chicago Symphony (I had chosen him for 3 out of the 4 movements).

It's not just individual performances that count, but the aesthetic, the era, the culture that they embody. Context is everything. In a box, misses may be as numerous as hits. You get to hear it all in the proper cultural frame - and value each according to their own merits. Music making is not like olympics.

[king ubu]

...
And Seiji Ozawa ? Or James Levine ?
...

Re: Ozawa... I have been circling around the Warner box for a while, aIT has it for less than 30€ right now. Would that be the one you recommend? Or any of the other two (Philips, Life for Music)?

[André]

No, it's this one:





It contains 23 discs. There are 3 other collections (including the one you mention). It's hard to figure what's best. I suggest you go according to the repertoire and the price. I went for this one because I was interested in hearing him in most of these works. And it was very cheap last year 

[king ubu]

Had a hunch it was that one ... stumbled over it again a few minutes after posting and realized I forgot to include it ... will look at them all a bit more closely. Thanks!

Edit: the late Böhm is on the wishlist, too. Already have his "Symphonies" box.

[Jo498]

I wonder why the Ozawa Romeo & Juliet apparently only came out on CD in Japan (or if earlier it has been oop for decades) Unlike the Faust that has appeared in at least two (international) CD releases they also did not include it in the box shown. Does anyone know the recording? Recordings of that work are not exactly thick on the ground, so I am somewhat surprised the Ozawa recording remained unavailable.

[Ken B]

No, it's this one:





It contains 23 discs. There are 3 other collections (including the one you mention). It's hard to figure what's best. I suggest you go according to the repertoire and the price. I went for this one because I was interested in hearing him in most of these works. And it was very cheap last year 

I have it, I like it. Not a great B- of course but lots of goodies.

[North Star]

I wonder why the Ozawa Romeo & Juliet apparently only came out on CD in Japan (or if earlier it has been oop for decades) Unlike the Faust that has appeared in at least two (international) CD releases they also did not include it in the box shown. Does anyone know the recording? Recordings of that work are not exactly thick on the ground, so I am somewhat surprised the Ozawa recording remained unavailable.

Took me a while to realize you mean Berlioz's Roméo et Juliette, and not this one, curiously missing from the box..
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[Karl Henning]

The Brilliant Brahms box, the Stravinsky's-own box, the Munch/BSO/Berlioz box . . . the two Lenny boxes, the Hogwood Haydn box, the DRD Haydn box . . . perfectly satisfied with practically every box I've fetched in.

[North Star]

The Brilliant Brahms box, the Stravinsky's-own box, the Munch/BSO/Berlioz box . . . the two Lenny boxes, the Hogwood Haydn box, the DRD Haydn box . . . perfectly satisfied with practically every box I've fetched in.

Ditto for me (La Venexiana's Monteverdi and the assorted madrigals box, Brahms chamber music (Hyperion), Davis's LSO Live and Decca Berlioz boxes, Suzuki's final installment of the Bach cantatas, Foccroulle's Bach organ works, HM Lumières, Decca PI Haydn symphonies, EMI Britten Collector's Edition, EMI Vaughan Williams Collector's Edition, Decca Complete Rakhmaninov, Stravinsky conducts Stravinsky on Sony, Decca Complete Ravel, Sony Complete Debussy, EMI Complete Mahler, and also the UMG Complete Chopin for the most part)

[JCBuckley]

Don't know how big a box needs to be to qualify, but I generally don't buy box sets them anymore, now that I rely on streaming. 

But in the past I bought and enjoyed these multi-CD boxes:

I have all these, except the Paul van Nevel set, which I really regret not buying.

A couple of weeks ago, I bought the box of boxes, for a mere £175. No buyer's remorse as yet.