Bonus tracks (alternate movements, etc.)

[KevinP]

Years back, I bought a Mahler CD because it contained a track called 'Blumine.' This is not a CD of the first symphony, just an isolated recording of that movement sandwiched between two song cycles. Today, the movement is far more well known than when this CD was made (1985) because it's often included as a bonus track with recordings of the symphony. In those early days, the companies and listeners were so happy to put so much music on one disc that the CD hadn't yet come into its own; the notion of filling it to the max was still a few years away.

More recently, I bought McCreesh's CD of Monteverdi's Vespers from last year and was surprised that it didn't include both Magnificats. In fact, this was a turning point in my feelings on bonus tracks. Although at first I was surprised that they didn't stuff the CD with all the relevant music, which would take just as many discs, I slowly began to appreciate what McCreesh did: he took a stance and gave an interpretation. That began to mean something to me (although it's not my favourite interpretation of the work). I want the conductor/performer to make these choices. It should be up to them, not to me and how I program my CD player. Why should the inclusion of bonus tracks trump the importance of interpretation?

I have to allow a caveat here, though, for cases like Robert King's recording of the Vespers, which was part of an effort to record all of Monteverdi's sacred music. But part of me does wish to know what his overall interpretation is.

Thoughts?

[Mark]

I'm personally for the inclusion of any extras. If there's space on a CD, then I say, 'Fill it!'.

What bothers me more is when symphonies that'll comfortably fit onto a single CD are broken across discs in a set so that the whole cycle can be squeezed onto fewer discs. It's environmentally more sound (production of fewer CDs, less packaging, etc), but it means I end up either re-burning (and so creating still more demand for CD-Rs), or ripping/encoding to MP3 just to hear the work play uninterrupted.