Sunday Classics recordings note: The Budapest's stereo Beethoven and James Levine's RCA Mahler highlight a massive Sony BMG reissue series

The great Budapest stereo Beethoven cycle --
for $21.14 (including shipping)?

by Ken

Sony BMG Classics, the heir to the whole of the RCA and Columbia-CBS-Sony classical catalogs, recently dumped onto the market a bunch of big CD boxes containing lots of exceedingly interesting recordings. Of course the packaging is no-frills, and more seriously I never know what to expect in the way of technical quality with these megadumps. But for the two sets I've already ordered -- the Budapest Quartet's Columbia stereo complete Beethoven cycle on eight CDs and the eight Mahler symphonies James Levine for RCA on ten CDs I've paid $21.14 and $22.40, respectively -- including shipping.

This is, in other words, about the same price that's being asked for many brand-new single CDs, which are apt to be, if they're lucky, maybe a tenth as good. If there were such a thing as a "record industry" today, you could ask, "Can you sustain a record industry with economics like this?" But there is no record industry, just a bunch of companies continuing for some arcane reason to put out records.

If I didn't already have nearly all of the contents of the nine-CD Arthur Rubinstein Brahms set on CD, I would have jumped at that; ditto for the four CDs' worth of Haydn symphonies conducted by George Szell, the nine CDs' worth of Isaac Stern playing Beethoven, and the eight CDs of Charles Munch conducting "Romantic Masterworks." Meanwhile
I'm still ogling the five CDs' worth of Mozart piano concertos played by Robert Casadesus with various conductors, and the six-CD set of most but frustratingly not quite all of the Prokofiev that Erich Leinsdorf recorded for RCA in his time with the Boston Symphony. And I haven't really checked carefully to see what I may have missed. (Oops, I just noticed that there's a six-CD set of some of Glenn Gould's Bach (presumably only an installment, since neither the Well-Tempered Clavier nor the French nor English Suites are here), and a six-CD set of Gould Beethoven (some sonatas plus the five concertos), and Günter Wand's first Bruckner symphony cycle, with the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra.

And that's not even dealing with a bunch of Sony BMG and EMI operatic reissues. I'm trying to be good, really I am. But I'm weak.

FOR MORE ON THE TWO SETS I HAVE ON ORDER,
WITH SOME MUSICAL SAMPLES, CLICK HERE

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