Heavyweight sets from the last couple of months include anthologies devoted to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (who would have celebrated his hundredth birthday yesterday), Joan Sutherland, Walter Weller and Georges Bizet.
Other highlights include Spanish conductor Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos's collected recordings for Decca, the first of two boxes charting Antal Doráti's work in London, and a Steve Reich retrospective on Nonesuch which our guest contributor Rob Cowan explored in detail back in March.
Released to mark the centenary of the great German baritone's birth (which fell on 28th May), this anthology brings together his complete recordings for HMV, Electrola, Teldec & Erato. Repertoire includes substantial selections of Lieder by Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Wolf, Mahler and Strauss, duets with Victoria de los Ángeles, three live recitals from Salzburg, and relative rarities by Eisler, Pfitzner and Schoeck.
Available Format: 79 CDs
The earliest recordings on this collection are a Don Giovanni with Carlo Maria Giulini and a live Alcina (with Fritz Wunderlich as Ruggiero), both from 1959; later highlights include Bellini's La sonnambula, Norma, Beatrice di Tenda and I Puritani, Donizetti's La fille du régiment and L'elisir d'amore, Rossini's Semiramide and another Alcina (all conducted by Richard Bonynge), plus excerpts from Bononcini's La Griselda and Graun's Montezuma. A second anthology comprising the opera recordings from 1971-1988 will follow later this year.
Available Format: 49 CDs
Issued to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the composer's death, this set includes complete recordings of his two most popular works Carmen (with Magdalena Kožená and Jonas Kaufmann) and Les pêcheurs de perles (with Barbara Hendricks, John Aler and Gino Quilico), plus rarities such as Ivan IV, La jolie fille de Perth (starring June Anderson), and the early cantata Clovis et Clotilde. Three bonus CDs are devoted to arrangements of Bizet's melodies by other composers and historical orchestral recordings from conductors including Thomas Beecham, John Barbirolli and Constant Lambert.
Available Format: 16 CDs
Including Das Lied von der Erde and Deryck Cooke’s realisation of Symphony No. 10, this composite Mahler cycle is assembled from live radio recordings made between 1939 (Willem Mengelberg in No. 4) and 2016 (Mariss Jansons in No. 7). Several of the recordings are released for the first time in any format here: Riccardo Chailly's accounts of Nos. 1, 5 and 10, and Bernard Haitink's performances of No. 6 and Das Lied von der Erde (with soloists Anna Larsson and Robert Dean Smith).
Available Format: 15 CDs
Steve Reich: Collected Works
Steve Reich, Philip Glass, New York Philharmonic, Jaap van Zweden, The Steve Reich Ensemble, Synergy Vocals, Theatre of Voices, Third Coast Percussion, Bang On A Can, Colin Currie Group, Ensemble intercontemporain, Eighth Blackbird et al
Reich's relationship with Nonesuch began in 1965 with a recording of It’s Gonna Rain, released to celebrate their ruby anniversary, this set spans six decades of his composing career and includes first recordings of Jacob’s Ladder (2023) and Traveler’s Prayer (2020). Other highlights include a Grammy Award-winning recording of Music for 18 Musicians, an account of the Double Sextet which won a Pulitzer Prize, and Different Trains and WTC 9/11 with the Kronos Quartet.
Available Format: 26 CDs + DVD Video
The Spanish conductor made his debut on Decca in 1965, joining forces with Romanian violinist Ion Voicu and the London Symphony Orchestra for concertos by Mendelssohn and Bruch; his final recording for the label was a 1983 account of Falla's Noches en los jardines de España with his compatriot Alicia de Larrocha. This set also includes a number of recordings which are new to CD, such as Bacarisse's Guitar Concertino and Rodrigo's Fantasía para un gentilhombre with Narciso Yepes, and Schumann's 'Rhenish' Symphony with the LSO.
Available Format: 11 CDs
Following boxes of Doráti's complete recordings with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra and the Philharmonia Hungarica, Eloquence continues to celebrate the Hungarian conductor's legacy with this collection of early stereo recordings made between July 1956 and July 1961; the set includes benchmark accounts of suites from Stravinsky's The Firebird and Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker, Copland's Appalachian Spring & Billy The Kid, Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 with Byron Janis, and Dvořák's Carnival Overture (released for the first time).
Available Format: 29 CDs
Maazel first conducted the Cleveland Orchestra at the tender age of thirteen, and eventually succeeded George Szell as Music Director in 1972; recorded over the course of the next decade, the repertoire here includes a complete set of the Beethoven symphonies, Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique, Strauss's Don Juan, Ein Heldenleben and Till Eulenspiegel, and Maazel's own 'symphonic realizations' of chansons by French pop star Serge Lama.
Available Format: 15 CDs
The Austrian musician was already a regular visitor to the Decca studios as leader of the Weller Quartet by the time he made his first recording for the label as a conductor in 1970 (a programme of opera arias with Spanish soprano Pilar Lorengar). Most of the recordings here were made between 1979 and 1982, and include the Bartók piano concertos with Pascal Rogé, the complete Prokofiev symphonies, the Mozart violin concertos with Mayumi Fujikawa, and Smetana's Hakon Jarl and Má vlast.
Available Format: 20 CDs
Described as 'the only other pianist' by Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, Fiorentino's early career trajectory was interrupted when he was involved in a serious plane-crash in his mid-twenties; he limited his concert-engagements for much of his life, but was a comparatively prolific recording-artist. This collection includes most of Liszt's major piano works, a substantial selection of Chopin, Beethoven's 'Waldstein', 'Appassionata', 'Moonlight' and 'Pathétique' sonatas, and the complete Rachmaninoff Preludes.
Available Format: 26 CDs
