Box Blather

Started by Ken B, April 19, 2014, 07:07:51 PM

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bigshot

The Westminster Chamber box is $200 at importcds.com

Mirror Image

Quote from: king ubu on March 01, 2015, 12:16:45 PM
I want a huge Juilliard box, pu-leeeeeze!

I want great recordings of Delius' rarer operas: Irmelin, The Magic Fountain, and Margot la rouge. :)

listener

There hasn't yet been a "complete" Fischer-Dieskau set of boxes yet.   Probably 800 cds or more plus some for the texts.  Comment occasioned by my setting up next listening to include songs by REGER, Wilhelm KEMPFF and Bruno WALTER among others.
"Keep your hand on the throttle and your eye on the rail as you walk through life's pathway."

Ken B

Quote from: listener on March 01, 2015, 05:59:16 PM
There hasn't yet been a "complete" Fischer-Dieskau set of boxes yet.   Probably 800 cds or more plus some for the texts.  Comment occasioned by my setting up next listening to include songs by REGER, Wilhelm KEMPFF and Bruno WALTER among others.

A scary thought. DFD was the greatest lieder singer ever I think, but I have so much by him, so very much: all Schubert, all Brahms, all Brahms again, all Wolf, all Strauss, plus various operas, cantatas, and so on that I have decided to not buy any more DFD.
Unless the price is right of course!

king ubu

Quote from: Mirror Image on March 01, 2015, 05:56:47 PM
I want great recordings of Delius' rarer operas: Irmelin, The Magic Fountain, and Margot la rouge. :)
Speaking of opera, were's the complete Milhaud opera box? But please well-rehearsed and with singers like Régine Crespin, Suzanne Danco and Mady Mesplé, right?
Es wollt ein meydlein grasen gan:
Fick mich, lieber Peter!
Und do die roten röslein stan:
Fick mich, lieber Peter!
Fick mich mehr, du hast dein ehr.
Kannstu nit, ich wills dich lern.
Fick mich, lieber Peter!

http://ubus-notizen.blogspot.ch/

EigenUser

Quote from: king ubu on March 01, 2015, 11:03:50 PM
Speaking of opera, were's the complete Milhaud opera box? But please well-rehearsed and with singers like Régine Crespin, Suzanne Danco and Mady Mesplé, right?
I'm still waiting for the Milhaud Suite en Sol. I have the score (which looks very interersting), but there is no recording! It kills me!
Beethoven's Op. 133 -- A fugue so bad that even Beethoven himself called it "Grosse".

Mookalafalas

My big Decca Wiener Philharmoniker box came in today.  Anticipating 64 hours of extreme musical pleasure.

  Listening to stuff from the old Mercury Living Presence box.  "Szeryng Plays Kreisler".  Man did they know how to mic stuff!! Fantastic sound. 
   Anybody thinking about the new Mercury box?  I do like Paray and Dorati--who are the conductors for an awful lot of it--but at the same time, it does have kind of a "just the left-over stuff" feel to it.
It's all good...

Moonfish

Quote from: Mookalafalas on March 02, 2015, 05:20:41 AM
My big Decca Wiener Philharmoniker box came in today.  Anticipating 64 hours of extreme musical pleasure.

  Listening to stuff from the old Mercury Living Presence box.  "Szeryng Plays Kreisler".  Man did they know how to mic stuff!! Fantastic sound. 
   Anybody thinking about the new Mercury box?  I do like Paray and Dorati--who are the conductors for an awful lot of it--but at the same time, it does have kind of a "just the left-over stuff" feel to it.

Have fun with the Wiener Philharmoniker box, Al!  It is indeed a very nice set! I share your feelings for the Mercury 3 box as it has absolutely no appeal to me. I think I am moving into a new phase....   0:)
"Every time you spend money you are casting a vote for the kind of world you want...."
Anna Lappé

bigshot

I wouldn't say that the Mercury box has leftovers in it. There's some great Dorati Tchaikovsky that costs a fortune if you try to get it anywhere else (I've been trying)

Abuelo Igor

Quote from: Mookalafalas on March 02, 2015, 05:20:41 AM
My big Decca Wiener Philharmoniker box came in today.  Anticipating 64 hours of extreme musical pleasure.

It just might be the finest box set I own. I play something from it every day. I don't think it has collected any dust from the moment it arrived.
L'enfant, c'est moi.

Mookalafalas

#510
Quote from: Abuelo Igor on March 02, 2015, 09:22:14 AM
It just might be the finest box set I own. I play something from it every day. I don't think it has collected any dust from the moment it arrived.

   Yes! I'am only about 12 discs in, but am very happy.  It reminds me of an old Sam Goldwyn quote (the Goldwyn of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, but he was forced out of the that triumvirate almost as soon as it was formed) about how to make good movies.  To Paraphrase freely "It's very easy. Just take a great story, hire the best screenwriters, Directors, and actors, and you will end up with a great movie".  Seems to be the formula of this box. Top music, conductors, orchestra, recording quality, and venue--of course it's all very good.
    The sleeves are flimsy, and lack "original covers", but the design is very classy.  That lends the whole box a feeling of quality, unlike the weirdly generic DG Philharmoniker box.  That does contain nice music, but historical DG recording quality is well behind Decca's, and it really does itself no favors by looking and feeling so cheap.
It's all good...

aap1960

Please forgive me if this has been asked before.

I am interested in getting the Mercury Living Presence, Vol. 3. It is listing much cheaper from Europe than the US. I am worried that the contents, specifically the booklet, will not be identical (maybe leaning more to the country of purchase, ie Italian vs English language). Some years ago I purchased the Sony Vivarte 60CD Collection boxset from Sony Korea, before it was available elsewhere. Since then, I've read all about the excellent notes about each individual CD in that Vivarte box, almost like the liner notes of each, from the English release. My Korean release is, obviously, all in Korean, and I miss the English translations. I do enjoy these little bit of "extras" that come with such releases. In fact I don't mind paying extra for it. So the question comes back to; Are these releases the same?

Thanks,

Tony

Moonfish

Quote from: aap1960 on March 07, 2015, 09:36:47 AM
Please forgive me if this has been asked before.

I am interested in getting the Mercury Living Presence, Vol. 3. It is listing much cheaper from Europe than the US. I am worried that the contents, specifically the booklet, will not be identical (maybe leaning more to the country of purchase, ie Italian vs English language). Some years ago I purchased the Sony Vivarte 60CD Collection boxset from Sony Korea, before it was available elsewhere. Since then, I've read all about the excellent notes about each individual CD in that Vivarte box, almost like the liner notes of each, from the English release. My Korean release is, obviously, all in Korean, and I miss the English translations. I do enjoy these little bit of "extras" that come with such releases. In fact I don't mind paying extra for it. So the question comes back to; Are these releases the same?

Thanks,

Tony

In my experience the European releases have always been the same as the ones in the US.  :)
"Every time you spend money you are casting a vote for the kind of world you want...."
Anna Lappé

aap1960

Quote from: Moonfish on March 07, 2015, 10:04:24 AM
In my experience the European releases have always been the same as the ones in the US.  :)


Thank you Moonfish

Tony

Mookalafalas

So, do most of you keep your discs in the boxes, or take them out to form a "library"?  I have been doing the latter.
    However, I've been downloading most of the boxes I already own from the internet so I will have digital copies, and can play them directly from my computer through my stereo.
    Last night I got most of my CD boxes out of storage and repacked the CDs up in them.  My room doesn't look that much different, in spite of packaging up 2300 discs.  Still, I feel good about the change.  I find I rarely seek out a particular CD; either I play a box all the way through, or a make a play "list" like "some big symphonies interspersed with solo piano and some baroque small ensemble playing" or some such.  I don't need all my discs on hand to do something like that.  In fact, I think it will be much easier to choose with less stuff about...

  By the way, I lately I really want the SEON box.
It's all good...

bigshot

The SEON box is jam packed with great stuff.

I usually rip these big boxes and put them in the garage. All I want is the digital file.

The new erato

Quote from: bigshot on April 07, 2015, 10:37:22 AM
The SEON box is jam packed with great stuff.

I usually rip these big boxes and put them in the garage. All I want is the digital file.
Where is your garage? Please!

Abuelo Igor

When I consider the purchase of a box set, one of my main criteria is: "How much of this do I already own?" It is difficult not to duplicate a number of the CDs if you are a more or less serious collector, and of course I'm not talking about the repertoire, but about the exact same recordings in the exact same mastering.

That is why I'm so interested now in the Baroque and early music boxes, because I wasn't a big fan of those periods, didn't buy any albums, and therefore I can be sure, now that I'm starting to come around to that music, of owning next to nothing of 50- or 60-CD sets.

On the other hand, I will probably never buy sets like "Boulez: 20th Century", because 27 out of its 44 discs are already in my shelves, and I can't imagine its price going down so much as to compensate for so much duplication.

But, since you can't avoid this tendency towards including the same recordings in box sets from the same company (example: the fair number of repeats in the "Decca Analogue Years" and "Vienna Philharmonic Orchestral Edition", not to mention "All-Baroque" and "Bach Masterworks"), I'm starting to consider a 20% of "old content" acceptable when deciding whether to buy a set or not.

Where do you draw the line?
L'enfant, c'est moi.

Mookalafalas

Quote from: Abuelo Igor on April 12, 2015, 02:24:18 AM
Where do you draw the line?

  In a crude way, it boils down to math.  If it's a box of 50 CDs for $100, you can say "$2 a disc for stuff that all looks good to me! What a bargain!" But if  you have 25 of the discs, it's now $4 each for the new ones.  If you saw them in a bargain shelf at your local store for $4 each, would you start grabbing them like mad? Or if there are 10 of them that you would consider bargains for $10 each? 

  I remember in about 1991 seeing Blue Note Jazz discs on sale for $5 each.  I didn't have much money at the time, but bought as many as I could.  I still remember the ones I bought. I regretted later that I hadn't found a way to buy more.  Those were 1991 dollars, and in 1991 I didn't have any money.  I didn't go to see Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers in Seattle because I didn't want to spend the $7 cover. 
   Now I have a fair amount of disposable income.  I can get music that is spiritually lifting art of the highest caliber for something like one 1991 dollar per hour.  (I don't mean to sound crass by monetizing it so vulgarly, but it makes thing crystal clear in a way.)  My life is enriched to no end.  I spend every hour of the day I can spare swimming in classical music.  For me now the place where I draw the line is "Will I have time in my life to listen to it"!!
It's all good...

kishnevi

Quote from: Abuelo Igor on April 12, 2015, 02:24:18 AM
When I consider the purchase of a box set, one of my main criteria is: "How much of this do I already own?" It is difficult not to duplicate a number of the CDs if you are a more or less serious collector, and of course I'm not talking about the repertoire, but about the exact same recordings in the exact same mastering.

That is why I'm so interested now in the Baroque and early music boxes, because I wasn't a big fan of those periods, didn't buy any albums, and therefore I can be sure, now that I'm starting to come around to that music, of owning next to nothing of 50- or 60-CD sets.

On the other hand, I will probably never buy sets like "Boulez: 20th Century", because 27 out of its 44 discs are already in my shelves, and I can't imagine its price going down so much as to compensate for so much duplication.

But, since you can't avoid this tendency towards including the same recordings in box sets from the same company (example: the fair number of repeats in the "Decca Analogue Years" and "Vienna Philharmonic Orchestral Edition", not to mention "All-Baroque" and "Bach Masterworks"), I'm starting to consider a 20% of "old content" acceptable when deciding whether to buy a set or not.

Where do you draw the line?

For me the calculation is how much of the rest do I actually want, and how much would I need to spend to get it.

In the example you gave, I would say, ah, 17 recordings I do not have!  How many of them would I like to have? And how much would it cost to get them individually?   Then compare that to the price of the box.

It does help that I am not into "historical" recordings because of sonics, and I look for individual performers, composers, and eras. So boxes like the VPO box do not really appeal to me.  I already have close to 40 Beethoven symphony cycles, and loads of other warhorses...I do not need grab bags of core repetoire.