The Super-Duper Cheap Bargains Thread

[Mookalafalas]

Oh, and the upcoming Piatigorsky box ... plenty of overlap with the beloved Rubinstein and Heifetz boxes, but still, a no-brainer!

  Love historical violin? So I take it you've already got (or have ordered) the Menuhin from Amazon UK? That's one of the craziest bargains of all time.  I wonder how good the 10 DVDs are?

  About "when the boxes will run out"--I'm starting to suspect never.  I had thought it was a kind of weird fad or experiment initially, but it seems that it will go on until we stop buying the boxes.  I've stopped following the DG stuff, as so much is repackaging the same material, and even my beloved DHM seems to be doing that a fair amount.  I'm passing on most things these day, unless its irresistible--and even on the stuff I'm really interested in I don't mind waiting until the price plummets, which most do. But then little odd things come out, completely under my radar, like Leonard Rose and Michala Petri, and both those turned out to be wonderful. Still, even if it feels like picking diamonds off of the street, your pockets can get uncomfortably full...

[Brian]

My main quibble is that these boxes are coming out too fast ... but then the question is: how many of them are still to be done?

I'm curious about this too, but the different "legacy" labels all seem to have different strategies. Sony keeps unearthing things that Columbia, CBS, etc. let sit in the archives for decades, with boxes dedicated to artists like Leonard Rose or Gary Graffman - though these suffer from the old strategy of recording the exact same repertoire with every new musician to come along. On the opposite end, EMI - until its demise and even now as Warner - seemed bent on releasing the same 10 box sets over and over and over again.



With EMI/Warner, I am waiting for various old boxes (Zacharias Scarlatti) to be reissued anew because I like the new cover artwork better than the old cover artwork. And for a few I will buy the old cover art as it goes out of print because I liked those artworks. Sony has been doing an especially appealing job, to me, with their big new boxes, and they only repackage the material 2-3 times - once with the original artwork, once in the cheap white-framed series.

[Ken B]

I'm curious about this too, but the different "legacy" labels all seem to have different strategies. Sony keeps unearthing things that Columbia, CBS, etc. let sit in the archives for decades, with boxes dedicated to artists like Leonard Rose or Gary Graffman - though these suffer from the old strategy of recording the exact same repertoire with every new musician to come along. On the opposite end, EMI - until its demise and even now as Warner - seemed bent on releasing the same 10 box sets over and over and over again.



With EMI/Warner, I am waiting for various old boxes (Zacharias Scarlatti) to be reissued anew because I like the new cover artwork better than the old cover artwork. And for a few I will buy the old cover art as it goes out of print because I liked those artworks. Sony has been doing an especially appealing job, to me, with their big new boxes, and they only repackage the material 2-3 times - once with the original artwork, once in the cheap white-framed series.

Yes, Sony has been much better. All the DHM stuff, Seon, all the smallish boxes. I have not seen a box from Harmonia Mundi (the French one) in a while, alas.

[akebergv]

  Love historical violin? So I take it you've already got (or have ordered) the Menuhin from Amazon UK? That's one of the craziest bargains of all time.  I wonder how good the 10 DVDs are?

I have not received my Menuhin box yet but before it went down to £34 I was seriously considering the Bruno Monsaingeon Edition Vol. 2, which turns out to cover eight of the eleven DVDs in the Menuhin box. Monsaingeon is considered one of the very best documentarians of classical artists, with well-known documentaries on Glenn Gould, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (=Bruno Monsaingeon Edition Vol. 1) and Sviatoslav Richter (=Bruno Monsaingeon Edition Vol. 3). He was a personal friend of Menuhin for decades ( and a fellow violinist), so I expect much from his documentaries, which in addition to lengthy interviews also contain a number of complete performances, both orchestral and chamber music, much of it filmed in the Soviet Union in the 1980s. For contents of the Monsaingeon part, see the pictures from the Bruno Monsaingeon Edition Vol. 2: .

[Mookalafalas]

I have not received my Menuhin box yet but before it went down to £34 I was seriously considering the Bruno Monsaingeon Edition Vol. 2, which turns out to cover eight of the eleven DVDs in the Menuhin box. Monsaingeon is considered one of the very best documentarians of classical artists, with well-known documentaries on Glenn Gould, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (=Bruno Monsaingeon Edition Vol. 1) and Sviatoslav Richter (=Bruno Monsaingeon Edition Vol. 3). He was a personal friend of Menuhin for decades ( and a fellow violinist), so I expect much from his documentaries, which in addition to lengthy interviews also contain a number of complete performances, both orchestral and chamber music, much of it filmed in the Soviet Union in the 1980s. For contents of the Monsaingeon part, see the pictures from the Bruno Monsaingeon Edition Vol. 2: https://www.amazon.de/Yehudi-Menuhin-Bruno-Monsaingeon-Blu-ray/dp/B00LLDZFBE/ref=sr_1_6?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1537025917&sr=1-6&keywords=Bruno+Monsaingeon+Edition.

Wow! That is some great news! It hadn't even occurred to me that they would be of more than just historical interest (e.g. some brief recordings for television or some such).

[king ubu]

  Love historical violin? So I take it you've already got (or have ordered) the Menuhin from Amazon UK? That's one of the craziest bargains of all time.  I wonder how good the 10 DVDs are?

I've had it for quite a while and paid quite a bit more ... but if only for the many recordings with Hephzibah, that was easily worth it! (Consider this: if I paid 150-180€, 20-25 years ago, when record stores still existed, that would have just about allowed me to buy two opera boxes, or about five full-priced classical CDs. I know it wasn't that crazy everywhere else, here it was, and before having internet and a credit card, there were no other options available to me, so a substantial part of my - jazz - collection was built during those days ... considering that, from the day I started listening to - and collecting - classical music, almost every disc has been sort of a bargain  )

I haven't yet watched any of the DVDs btw - I hardly do that, it will take me ages to watch all the operas and stuff I've amassed in that format.

[Alek Hidell]

To return to the Silvestri box for a moment, for those who do downloads it's available on Amazon (US) for $28.49. As it's a 15-disc set, that ain't bad at all.

[flyingdutchman]

To return to the Silvestri box for a moment, for those who do downloads it's available on Amazon (US) for $28.49. As it's a 15-disc set, that ain't bad at all.

It's also on Spotify for those who want to go that route.

[PerfectWagnerite]

To return to the Silvestri box for a moment, for those who do downloads it's available on Amazon (US) for $28.49. As it's a 15-disc set, that ain't bad at all.

Why bother? You can get the cds, brand new, for under $30 one Ebay:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Icon-Constantin-Silvestri-Complete-EMI-Recording-UK-IMPORT-CD-Box-Set-NEW/362339224438?epid=139953530&hash=item545d19cb76:g:k~EAAOSwhTBbEaMI

[Biffo]

Why bother? You can get the cds, brand new, for under $30 one Ebay:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Icon-Constantin-Silvestri-Complete-EMI-Recording-UK-IMPORT-CD-Box-Set-NEW/362339224438?epid=139953530&hash=item545d19cb76:g:k~EAAOSwhTBbEaMI

The ebay listing is not much use to anyone living in the UK. Amazon UK have it for £23.99 and free delivery.

I have agonised over this set for a while. I already have the bulk (10CDs) of it in the box set released by D Classics in 2001. The Icon box says 'Digital remastering as shown in the booklet'. Has everything been remastered or just selected items? Does anyone know if the Icon set is significantly better than the D Classics issue; the reviews suggest variable quality.

[PerfectWagnerite]

The ebay listing is not much use to anyone living in the UK. Amazon UK have it for £23.99 and free delivery.

So whether you are in US or UK you can get it pretty cheaply.

[Biffo]

So whether you are in US or UK you can get it pretty cheaply.

Yes indeed but I am still uncertain as to whether to take the plunge.

[PerfectWagnerite]

Yes indeed but I am still uncertain as to whether to take the plunge.

I have this set. I haven't done a one to one comparison with the ICON set to see which pieces are not in the former:

https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005NF3T/?tag=goodmusicguideco

I would say everything is excellent - including 2 of my favorite Dvorak 7th and 8ths. I like the fact that there is very few core German repertoire (Beethoven, Brahms, etc.) which seem to be in every other box. The sound is better than you might think. You can hear how wholly natural Silvestri's intepretations are. For around $30 I think you can do a lot worse.

[Ghost of Baron Scarpia]

Mosts content is listed as remastered in 2000, some 1998 or earlier. A few items, apparently never issued before, 2013.

[Biffo]

Mosts content is listed as remastered in 2000, some 1998 or earlier. A few items, apparently never issued before, 2013.

Many thanks to you and PerfectWagnerite for your replies, I will go ahead and order.

[Pat B]

   That's very reasonable, and I hope everyone feels that way. But when do you have enough "discs that you love," or stop looking for more? I wonder about that a lot.

I expect that most here are still looking. I am — but my buying is more targeted than it used to be.

Congratulations on scoring $600 for the Heifetz box.

[CB45]

Menuhin Century - my order (at the low price) has now been cancelled by Amazon.

[PerfectWagnerite]

Menuhin Century - my order (at the low price) has now been cancelled by Amazon.

+1

[flyingdutchman]

I expect that most here are still looking. I am — but my buying is more targeted than it used to be.

Congratulations on scoring $600 for the Heifetz box.

Are you referring to the Rubenstein box?

[Mookalafalas]

Are you referring to the Rubenstein box?

  No, he's talking to me.  A few years ago I found a new copy of the giant Heiffetz box still being sold in a music shop. I knew it was going for a high price on Ebay, so I bought it and flipped it. (At that time I wasn't a big fan of classical music.)

  Oh, and I got the Menuhin rejection too.  I was definitely curious about it, but not $200 curious.  The silver lining is that following the link to the Menuhin led me to the Arrau box, which I'd been hankering for, but hadn't yet seen at a reasonable price--to bring the thread back on topic, for those who missed it, the Arrau megabox is $108 at Amazon.co.uk (unless that turns out to have been mislabled too!)