FLAC+CUE, no scans, 170 CDs



random review:

What is the line between forbidding and promising, intimidating and potentially exciting? Deciding to acquire this 160 CD box (plus one each DVD and CDROM) for the price of the equivalent of 9 premium price CDs involves at least a moment's reflection on where the line lies. Will I ever play all of this? Does it matter if I don't?
 
I have played only the lightest speckle of tracks in the interests of reporting first impressions. Even so I hope that this will be of some value in dealing with these questions. I can at least touch in part of the outline of what to expect.
 
First, there's no competition. The de luxe Philips Mozart Edition complete box became generally unavailable ten or so years ago though one Amazon hero even now offers the set for £999. While I would not put it past Universal to issue a bargain basement box based on their vanguard Edition there's no news that they will. EMI might but there's no sign of it as yet and you might have to wait for the next big centenary or half centenary of the birth or death. Naxos will, I predict, ultimately issue a complete Mozart but then again they might not. After all they their predilection for online sound libraries seems deeply entrenched. In any event you might have to wait a while.
 
The potential purchaser of this Brilliant Classics set is confronted with Mozart's huge and variegated edifice of surviving music and must decide whether the promise of discovery and of revealed pleasure or of curiosity satisfied is enough to warrant the outlay.
 
You might well reflect on whether a large - but not this large - box of the Greatest Mozart or some such would fit the bill. Brilliant have one already at something like £40 for 40 CDs (93669 listed at £35.00) and so did EMI Classics in their very strong 2007 box Mozart 50 (0946 3 87894 2 0) at something like £43 for 50 CDs running the gamut from Tate, Barenboim, Oistrakh, Heutling, Kagan, Krips, Sawallisch and Haitink (many older recordings but very distinguished all the same). On the other hand the tantalising possibility of missing out on something will always be there when at the price of just £0.54 per disc you could have 'had it all'.
 
Completists, students, academics and the cash-strapped libraries they frequent alongside and Mozart fanatics, parents who are of the Mozart=child brain food persuasion and those collectors who are transfixed by huge boxed sets will muse … and at this price many will buy.
 
Those who shelled out for the earlier version of Brilliant's Mozart The Complete Works - A 250th commemorative edition (1756-2005) 170cds (92540) will wonder about whether to do so again. How many more times will they be confronted with yet another complete Mozart in which the changes have been rung. I doubt that this will be the last Mozart Edition issued though by their nature they are unlikely to be numerous.
 
Then again there's the continuing onward march of research to be borne in mind. How ‘complete’ is this set? Complete, practically speaking, but is this every dance, every orchestral movement, every song? I suspect that there will be discoveries to come from Russian and Chinese vaults, from Christies' catalogues, from magnates’ strong rooms and from chance encounters in university archives. Already there are perhaps some minor omissions.
 
As it stands there's a lifetime (at least one) of listening here to make friends old or new, to feed aversions, to slake the thirst for knowledge of 'undiscovered countries' and for those rigorous souls who will listen their way systematically through every disc. Then again if you can transfer these discs onto a Brennan or other storage device you could, once the transfer has been made, press the 'random play' button and wonder at the variety. Just don't forget to ensure that you have entered the details for each disc as you make the transfer or check that the set is fully entered on the current version of the Brennan or other database. So many options.
 
Telling against the set is the lack of a big book or even several books keyed to the CDs and tracks - think in terms of Graham Johnson's book of the Schubert songs for Hyperion (review). They will have to console themselves with CDROM and DVD which form part of the 12+ inch long box. The CD-ROMs supply profuse pdf context and texts (no translations though and ineffectual linking to particular CDs and tracks) but you may resent having to load this each time you are curious.
 
With sets like this one wonders how long before Brilliant will follow the example of Hänssler and issue an IPod or other MP3 player of these recordings. Pristine might be the pennant for another cherished route where Brilliant's Mozart, Brahms, Beethoven, Vivaldi, Haydn and Rachmaninoff form a corpus for transfer onto a hard drive on sale to those keen to have the complete heritages on a single mass storage device.
 
As with all such collections there is, in potential, something unmusical about such sets. They foster the pleasure in possession. But that's a factor hardwired into all collecting. One works on the assumption that mere ownership is not the only factor in the mind of those who read reviews and consider buying.
 
Finding your way around the set is aided by the card sleeves being colour keyed by genre.
 
CD 11 (symphonies 40 and 41) was the first disc I tried. Jaap Ter Linden directs lithe and lean performances by a chamber orchestra using period instruments. The 2002 sound matches the style and while good could have benefited from a more fleshy tone. It has grand impact but is not what you would call sumptuous. Perhaps these matters only occur to those of us brought up on the probably over-dressed yet irresistible luxury of Böhm and the Berlin Phil (review review review).
 
CD 19 came next. The mid-1990s and the Sir Henry Wood Hall witnessed Derek Han’s recording of the piano concertos with the Philharmonia and Paul Freeman. The sound here stands tall and confident. Han is an adept player who is open to the emotionalism of Mozart as in the deftly passionate final Allegro of Piano Concerto No. 22 (review review).
 
CD 26 gives us the works for horn and orchestra. The finale of the Fourth Concerto is presented with affectionate and uncondescending wit and intelligence by Herman Jeurissen with the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra conducted by Roy Goodman. This splendidly packed out was licensed from Olympia. Delightful.
 
Contrast CD 26 with the lightly filled CD 29 (54:54). The Sinfonia Concertante is played by Gil Sharon (who also directs) and Yuri Gandelsman (viola) with the Amati Chamber Orchestra. This is a grandly bustling and by no means unromantic reading. Sharon and Gandelsman are smooth toned rather than lavish. The final Presto is a total pleasure – brisk yet joyfully poignant. (review review)
 
Move then to CD 45 for the vocal Notturni – the Piu non si trovano has the vocal trio underpinned by the resinous basset horn. The finest vocal Mozart. How about the Menuetto from the 12 Duos for two horns K487? This is resolutely and jauntily despatched by Martin van de Merwe and Jos Buurman.
 
CD 53 originated from Nimbus. It’s a 1995 coupling of the quintets for clarinet and horn with the oboe quartet. Gerd Seifert – who made a classic recording of the four horn concertos with Karajan and the BPO for DG in the 1960s - is the horn soloist. These chamber recordings have splendidly gripping warmth and immediacy. K407 ends with the sort of nonchalant jolly nobility that might one day tempt someone to render this as a Horn Concerto.
 
The String Quartets are shared between the Sonare Quartet and the Franz Schubert of Vienna Quartet. I sampled the start of K421 (CD 77) from the latter and was immediately drawn in to the honey-soaked warmth of the playing and the teeming density of invention. Very satisfying. (review)
 
What a change when we move to CD 93 and the keyboard works for four hands. The Sonata K381 looks to the romantic era but the presentation by Bart van Oort and Ursula Dütschler is shackled to the eighteenth century by the flaky fortepiano – some may like the sound – I don’t. The playing is skilful and touching but the overall effect does not draw me back. (review) (review)
 
Moving to the vocal music I tried the Two German Church songs K343 on CD 102 (review review Sacred Choral). Instantly struck by the finely prepared and judged singing of these modest unison pieces I was impressed with the unanimity and the modestly self-contained spirit of this music as prepared by Nicol Matt. That is presumably the squeak of the organ tracker action rather than a bird. Who knows – it is all very innocently agreeable.
 
CD 116 - the Freemason Music – all 52:40 of it - reminded me of another grand cycle on CD – that of Bis’s Sibelius Edition which in its final 13th volume will include the Finnish composer’s music for the Masons. The Wiener Akademie are conducted by Martin Haselbock with Christoph Prégardien (tenor) taking the rather baritonal Zerfliesset heut’ K483. Fine singing most grippingly recorded.
 
CD 124 is the sixth and last of the volumes of Mozart’s concert arias (review). This is a rather unrefined sounding analogue effort from 1970 – the oldest recording here, I think. However the singing in Non curo l’affetto K74b from Sylvia Geszty is like molten silver, wonderful attention to dynamics and no trace of shrillness. Otmar Suitner – the DDR darling of Eterna and Berlin Classics fame – conducts the Staatskapelle Dresden with smiling precision. Makes we want to track down Suitner’s Mozart symphonies – we may well have undervalued them. Treasure indeed. Make a note to explore the other concert arias.
 
CD 130 – La Finta Semplice. This was recorded in the Mozarteum Salzburg reminding me that I had seen the Mozarteum in the recentish Unitel Classica Euroarts DVD A Bridge Between Two Worlds celebrating the life of André Previn. Previn was joined by Messrs Kuchl, Seifert and Bartolomey for two Mozart Piano Quartets (K478 and K493) – elite playing by the way. Despite the extensive recitative (illuminated by the wittily imaginative harpsichord – tr. 13) this opera is worth spending time with. This is especially the case in a really fine performance from a stellar cast including Donath, Holl, Rolfe-Johnson, Berganza, Moser and Lloyd with the Mozarteum conducted by Leopold Hager. Going by the names of those engaged in the other operas – Mackerras (Telarc) and Kuijken (Accent) are to the fore in the more famous operas - these are at least very good versions and often amongst the very best.
 
The performances and recordings always seem by experience or repute either at least good and at best outstanding so I do not see anything here that does Mozart a disservice. If you don't like a work recorded here it could be because it doesn't, as they used to say, ‘strike on your box’ rather than the performers or engineers having failed in some way.
 
During the first 12 days of January 2011 BBC Radio 3 is clearing the decks to broadcast every single note Mozart wrote. With sets like the present one radio stations the world over can celebrate every round number and five-divisible Mozart birthyear/deathyear as often as they numbers keep coming. At this price it’s also a rite or extravaganza any listener can indulge.
 
Mozart is one of the greats so if you are tempted by the low price don't feel you have to hold back.