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And it's even cheaper here in Europe: €8 at amazon.de

Ligeti - Works - 9CDs (Sony) - €23 at amazon.de

EMI 20th Century Masterpieces (16 CDs) for £29 at amazon.co.uk Here is the link to the EMI website with track listing: http://www.emiclassics.co.uk/release.php?id=5099921750021

You might as well get the complete Shostakovich quartets performed by the Borodin Quartet for just a bit more: €26 at amazon.de Are you familiar with this set? No. I have the complete set of Shostakovich quartets played by .. hmm... the Shostakovich Quartet (on Regis), and I am very happy with it.

Youri Egorov, Master Pianist - EMI - 7CDs - £14 at amazon.co.uk. Anybody knows Egorov? Never heard of him.

You might as well get the complete Shostakovich quartets performed by the Borodin Quartet for just a bit more: €26 at amazon.de For sure, if you're in Europe! That particular set (as well as the Beethoven Quartet's cycle, which doesn't seem cheap anywhere) is hard to find and considerably more expensive in the USA than the Fitzwilliams'...I was just watching a set that went for $125 on eBay, although a touch of "eBay madness" was likely involved. Shipping from amazon.de or amazon.co.uk to the US should not be too expensive (amazon.fr, on the other hand, seems to have crazy shipping rates - even though everything is often shipped from the same warehouse). Moreover, you will get the EU VAT deducted, which is another 15-20% off.

You might as well get the complete Shostakovich quartets performed by the Borodin Quartet for just a bit more: €26 at amazon.de

There is also an EMI Messiaen 14-CD box available at amazon.co.uk for £25 I am not that much of a Messiaen fan to go for it, though. I am always baffled by the price disparity between different amazons. The same set at amazon.com costs $71 (also not too much for a 14-CD set, to be fair) - basically, 80% more.

Me too - that's what may have kept me from buying it, since I have the VHS. Audio and video were said to be identical to the videotape available, I now recall. I also remember someone raised the question why the Zappa family didn't take care of a proper DVD edition. They don't have the rights - neither to the movie, nor to the soundtrack.

As for Tennstedt, there is another EMI box released just a couple of weeks ago: Great EMI Recordings - 14 CDs - available for €30 at amazon.fr

I am eying this Stravinsky box for some time now. I assume it will not be out there for too long (see swift disappearance of the complete Gould box), so I shouldn't procrastinate much longer. It's even cheaper in the US. A couple more boxes I am thinking of - any comments on those would be appreciated: Klaus Tennstedt / London Philharmonic - Mahler Symphoinies - EMI - 16 CDs - available at amazon.fr for €35 Michel Plasson / Orchestre Nationale du Capitole de Toulouse - French Music - EMI - 37 CDs - available at amazon.de for €70

In a last ditch attempt to extract some revenue from the fading CD market major labels are repackaging old recordings into budget packages, often in a form of mammoth boxes. Add to this high-quality budget labels like Naxos and reissue ones like Brilliant Classics, and you get a lot of stuff to choose from. It is becoming less a matter of price, but of over-abundance of choice. Perhaps we could let each other know of worthwhile bargains out there. I already posted my praise fort he Sony / BMG Baroque Masterpieces 60 CD (!) box, available at amazon.de for €47 (non-EU buyers will get the VAT deducted, so it will be even cheaper for them). Of my recent bargain purchases I can also recommend Ravel's Orchestral Works 3 CD set by Orchestre de Paris / Martinon on EMI available for £5 at amazon.co.uk I am considering a few more budget boxes. Can anyone comment on them? Leinsdorf / Boston Symphony - Prokofiev - EMI - 6 CDs - €14 at amazon.fr Mravinsky / Leningrad Philharmonic - Erato - 12 CDs - €16 at amazon.fr 50th anniversary of Liege Philharmonic - Cypres - 50 CDs - €40 at amazon.fr (a lot of Belgian composers I have never heard of) James Levine / Various orchestras - Maher Symphonies - EMI - 10CDs - €20 at amazon.fr

Don't think so. I'm pretty sure he did arrangements himself. He did use people to transcribe solos for use as material for compositions and to copy parts (pre-computer typesetting days). Ali Askin (website) was the guy. He also arranged the follow-up Ensemble Modern disc of FZ compositions "Greggery Peccary...", after Zappa's passing (which is much less successful than "Yellow Shark"). Regarding "200 Motels" DVD, I have read the sound on it is bad.

I think Dog / Meat from Yellow Shark would have pleased Stravinsky... The whole disc is great. Dog / Meat: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr3y2MUdq7U&feature=related

This is the reason why I tolerate Chopin in Sviatoslav Richter's interpretation only - not too much Romanticism there: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ-NAgDpRVs There are two volumes of excellent solo piano works by Russian / Soviet composers on the early XX century (Roslavits, Lourie, Mossolov, Polovonkin, Protopopov) on hat[now]ART: Then there is Leo Ornstein - very wild stuff. I have this CD - highly recommended.

It's all projection, indeed. I suggest we get on with discussing the music, each in his/her terms (or, as you would probably say, in terms mindlessly borrowed from professional critics). Discussing the music is silly enough, discussing how to discuss the music is plain absurd. A side note on reviews, whether professional of amateur, I tend to hardly pay any attention to those. I somehow can't reconcile the facts that: a) 80% of reviews are positive, b) 90% of released music is crap. There are a few reviewers / forum posters whose opinions have empirically shown to coincide with mine in most cases, and these are the only ones I pay attention to when making a buying decision. Meanwhile, back to Bach - anybody heard Olli Mustonen's recordings of Bach and Shostakovich preludes & fugues (he released a couple of CDs, each mixing Bach's and Shostakovich's works). The concept is quite intriguing.

...seems pretty damning to me (with or without the IMHO). If it's that bad it should be possible to say clearly why. Otherwise 'Perahia doesn't really move or engage me' gets the same point across. I know neither Perahia's version or Gould's; I'm making a more general point about the way we amateurs discuss music, largely aping the approach we've picked up from more combative critics. Some of them have the technical insight (and have devoted some intensive study into the music they are reviewing) to at least partially excuse their disdain. I'm not convinced most armchair critics do. Bev, I respectfully disagree. We tend to respond emotionally to music and use subjective loaded terms to describe it. I don't think professional critics have a monopoly on use of the terms "deep", "shallow" or whatever. I heard both Gould and Perrahia versions many times, and I don't need to refer to a critical consensus to make (and state) my opinion. If it sounds shallow to me I think I have every reason to say so, and so does anybody for whom it sounds deep.

How are qualities/deficiencies like 'depth', 'shallowness', 'substance' calibrated? They are not - these are relative, not absolute terms - although we do use standard English (myself, however, with questionable success), so deviation can't be that dramatic. At the same time, when listening to different interpretations of the same work I am fairly comfortable making comparisons in these admittedly fuzzy terms, and I am not sure I need to be an expert to do so.

Have you heard Gould's versions of Goldberg's? Perrahia's recordings was my first exposure to Goldberg's, and I liked them, but once I heard Gould '55 (and subsequently, any other "major" version of Goldberg's), I grew to regard Perrahia as a pretty but shallow salon version, Goldber's-lite, if you will (IMHO, of course).

I'll go for the Naxos one, I guess - it's cheap. Will report here on the quality. To quote the post press "Reply" under the post you'd like to quote .

Any particular recommendation for available editions of the Besancon recital? There are new Naxos and Opus Kura editions (I am not considering the 90s EMI).

The Art of the Fugue, ensemble version performed by Solists of Berliner Bach Akademie (with vibraphone and organ!), Herbert Breuer conducting, - listened today for nth time, and I feel I can't appreciate it. The music is intricate and clever, but sounds mathematical and mechanical to an extreme, cold and devoid of any emotion. Quite boring, frankly. Could it be the performance / interpretation? Any thoughts, perhaps recommendations of other performances?

Thanks! Is it this BBC release you're talking about: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00001W07K ? I am not a fan of Chopin, but I like how Richter plays him.

Got the box and listened to a few CDs. The recordings are from Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, Vivarte, SEON, Arte Nova catalogs, and just a few of RCAs and Sonys. Most of the stuff I heard is excellent - Telemann, Bach's St Jonh, Bach's solo violin (played with curved bow!), Bach's lute music, Lully... I was not too hot on Leonhardt's Goldberg Variations (on harpsichord) - in general there is probably too much Leonhardt here (around 10 CDs out of 60) - but they are definitely more than tolerable. There is a even an electronic booklet with short but well written essays for every disc.

Looks like a good bargain. I just placed an order. http://www.amazon.com/Baroque-Masterpieces-Various-Box/dp/B001CBX2RO/ref=sr_1_2?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1303890831&sr=1-2