Are you collecting any series' of recordings?

[Que]

Anyone know how these compare with Gardiner's series?

We have a thread on the subject: The Bach Cantatas .

Q

[Mark]

We have a thread on the subject: The Bach Cantatas .

Q

Much obliged, Que. Thank you.

[George]

Yes, the three I have are all excellent. Piano concertos are my fave concertos and music from the Romantic era in particular whisks me away to a simpler, more idealistic, more in touch with nature and the arts time...

...thus those Romantic Piano Concertos touch me

Do you have the green Medtner one? 

[Mark]

Do you have the green Medtner one? 

Ooooh! I do! Which means I lied earlier: I also have three discs from this series.

[George]

Ooooh! I do! Which means I lied earlier: I also have three discs from this series.

Isn't that one outstanding? 

[Mark]

Isn't that one outstanding? 

I'll be honest, I've only heard half of it, and only once. What I heard was very good though, yes.

[Solitary Wanderer]

Do you have the green Medtner one? 

No, George...not yet

I have these three:


SACD

[Gabriel]

But I more or less buy most issues of Opus 111's Vivaldi Edition because of their excellence.

I have the same opinion on their releases.

[Solitary Wanderer]

Ooooh! I do! Which means I lied earlier: I also have three discs from this series.

Mark, as we both have three titles perhaps we should see who can collect all forty-two  titles in the series first 

[Maciek]

Wouldn't mind having complete Melodiya/BMG Musica non Grata

Don't get me started! I only began "collecting" that when it was already going out of print - so I ended up with one volume (the Denisov). All the others I ordered turned out to be out of stock.

Does it count if the series is small? Like 12 volumes? The Amadeus Chamber Orchestra/Agnieszka Duczmal series is up to volume 12 now, and I intend to get the whole set. I only have 5 so far though:



(the Brahms disc apparently has an inferiority complex)

[longears]

Boulez's Mahler.  Jacobs's Mozart.  Segerstam's Rautavaara.  Zinman's Beethoven.

[Tancata]

Jacobs's Mozart.

Good call  .

[Michel]

Robert King, prison?

[Renfield]

Robert King, prison?

Robert King + indecent assault = Robert King in prison.

[Don]

Robert King, prison?

Sad but true.  He was convicted of molesting children.  Of course, he denies he did anything wrong.  Think he's in the joint for 3 or four years.  The whole thing is disgusting.  I loved his Handel conducting and was blown away when I heard the news.  For the time being, Hyperion will continue keeping his discs in the inventory (a very large inventory).

What's next?  Julia Fischer puts terminally ill people to death?

[Renfield]

Sad but true.  He was convicted of molesting children.  Of course, he denies he did anything wrong.  Think he's in the joint for 3 or four years.  The whole thing is disgusting.  I loved his Handel conducting and was blown away when I heard the news.  For the time being, Hyperion will continue keeping his discs in the inventory (a very large inventory).

What's next?  Julia Fischer puts terminally ill people to death?

I'm not sure why you find his conviction so surprising. He was, on occasion, working with underage boys. If he "swings that way", as the - very insensitive - expression goes, it is not at all unfathomable that he is guilty as charged. And I prefer this outcome to something like what happened with a certain Polish film-director-cum-paedophile, highly talented as the latter might be.

(Not to say that anyone working with an underage person of the sex they are attracted to is necessarily a paedophile. But if he/she anyway had such tendencies, it would only make it worse. Thus, I'm not surprised by King's current predicament.)

[Tancata]

Apologies if my off-colour reference derailed the thread.

Mark, on the Bach cantatas thread, there isn't too much direct comparison of the different cycles. There is a little, but it's mostly people describing the qualities of this or that cycle. There is a bit more on the thread from the old forum.

If you want a complete cycle, then it has to be Harnoncourt, Leusink, Suzuki, or Gardiner. Leusink on Brilliant is not quite complete, AFAIK, with some movements left out here and there when personnel weren't available. Suzuki and Gardiner are still in progress (I calculate Gardiner to finish 2011, Suzuki a couple of years later). All these are traditional performances with a choir and soloists (Suzuki's forces smaller than Gardiner's).

Don said on the Bach cantata thread that Gardiner is more celebratory, Suzuki more reverential. That's spot on. Suzuki's recordings are also somewhat more polished since they weren't done "live". So there are occasional moments of raggedness and mistakes on the Gardiner recordings.

Suzuki's soloists are generally decent, with some great ones (the bass Peter Kooij, alto Mera) and some mediocre ones. Gardiner's soloists are mixed. Some superb ones - Mark Padmore, James Gilchrist, Magdalena Kozena, Dietrich Henschel; many fine ones of Suzuki standard or better (Malin Hartelius, Daniel Taylor, Nathalie Stutzmann) and some genuinely sub-par ones (Stephen Varcoe, and a selection of struggling altos taken from his choir). 

They are both great cycles.

Recently Sigiswald Kuijken has begun a OVPP cycle that takes a very different approach with its own strengths and weaknesses. His soloists create a wonderful blend but are sometimes a little bland in the solo numbers. It's only a 20-CD cycle which will cover one liturgical year (Kuijken's favourite cantata from each Sunday and Feast Day).

[johnQpublic]

I'm seriously considering collecting the entire Hyperion Romantic Piano Concerto series.

So far I have three titles

I hope you're below the age of 40 or else at that rate you'll be dead before you have it all....hehe

[Cato]

Another Vote for the Mahler symphonies conducted by Boulez on DGG.  Only the Eighth is left, unless he intends to tackle the Tenth, completed or otherwise.

Any news on that last item?

[Hector]

Only by default.

Once I had acquired the last issued, the 11th, I found that I had all the symphonies of Robert Simpson.

Havergall Brian. Never ever performed in the country of his birth except in the recording studio.


The orchestral works of William Alwyn. I get one and am persuaded to buy another which is no hardship on Naxos.

Lyrita. I had a lot of this stuff on LP. It is close to becoming an addiction which, I am told, can be cured by your GP as long as you attend the Addiction Clinic, or am I confusing that with smoking?

No, smoking costs more