I had it on cassette when I was a teenager and pretty much wore it out.. So good to hear it again. I know the Markevich thats also in there is a great performance but with this (magnificent) work, if you're not francophone, you really need it in English. And Gielgud, Courtenay and Ron Moody?! How did they do that?
I suspect the Bernstein IPO Petrushka is listed as an orchestral work because Bernstein used the 1947 edition. For whatever reason, DG is treating the 1947 as an orchestral piece distinct from the 1911 stage version, which doesn't make sense. Stravinsky created the Petrushka Suite for concert performances. He still treated the 1947 revision as a ballet.
Thats a very sensible rationalisation, thanks. I think Dave overdoes it a bit on this set's "completeness" as there's pretty much nothing beside some arrangements missing. But it is odd that they didn't put a "Pulcinella" suite in there, in line with the various Petrushka and Firebird things. Universal certainly have some good versions of that, and you don't always want to listen to the vocal material....
The styrofoam insert is just classic. Maybe I can remove it and shove some old baseball cards in there. Overall this seems like a very artfully blended box. Plenty of great Boulez, who had a real Vulcan mind meld with Stravinsky. I also think the Bernstein Symphonies in C And Three Movements with the Israel Phil are the best out there, spiky but still somehow beautifully tender at times. I’m very impressed with this selection; were I in the big box market right now I’d snap this right up. The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra recordings are worth the price of admission alone.
I have multiple good versions of the most famous Stravinsky ballets and recordings of a handful of other works like the Symphony of Palms and the Symphony in C. Without the duplication it's only 5 or 6 discs of music, so at the price this box was a no brainer to get a decent or better version of most of the rest of his output. I should be able to toss the flotation devices and stick the Stravinsky CDs I already have in the box.
Don, Dave is exaggerating ever so slightly by saying it isn't complete. All that might matter that isn't there is a recording of the Pulcinella suite (surprising they didn't include one on the second go), a Petrushka suite (unlike him I don't see the point of that anyways), Tchaikovsky arrangements etc. And some of the violin and piano stuff he did with Samuel Dushkin. Thats easy to rectify as theres a great Hyperion set with Thomas Ades on piano doing all that. But theres enough of that in this set anyhow to keep anyone happy.... The omissions are really tiny things at the margins, and I envy you hearing all that stuff you havent heard before in such good performances.
@@murraylow4523 I got my box on Sunday and have listened to the first couple of discs with Boulez/Cleveland doing The Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring. They are outstanding recordings to me; the sound is demonstration quality. I don't see a problem with the packaging. It works fine with the styrofoam insert in or out and fits in a stack of normal jewel cases on a shelf just fine. Complaining about this packaging is a real first world problem. I look forward to hearing all this new music and don't really care if there are a few scraps not in the box. Stravinsky was probably the biggest hole in my CD collection of any major composer and this was a no brainer purchase for me.
@@Don-md6wn They are really very good. I think Dave is right about how one tends to drift off in listening to the Firebird. Its an early work after all and I do prefer to listen to it in Suite form. But, speaking of first world problems, if we're at the point of complaining about Boulez' DG Petrushka and Rite, well, its getting a bit silly. They are excellent sonically and as performances. I was lucky enough before all of this isolation to hear and see both Boulez and Tilson-Thomas do the Rite at the BBC Proms. Both were excellent but somehow the Boulez was darker and more mysterious (might have something to do with the general sound of the San Francisco Symphony in this sort of repertoire, brighter and maybe a bit more flashy). But the thing is, Stravinsky was like Picasso as just about everyone says, he changed his style a lot and somehow always just sounded like Stravinsky! So, in there, you can really experience that (the Warner box doesn't do it). Even the Concerto in D Dave doesnt like is highly entertaining in there, Mutter's Violin Concerto is really pretty good (and has Paul Sacher, one of the most important Stravinsky commissioners along with commissioning works by other people, conducting very well). The Ebony Concerto, which is sort of fake cool jazz is very well done by Boulez and co., which you might not expect. You might not like the late works, where he was using serialism as a model, but I'd recommend the "Requiem Canticles" - very Stravinsky but also very different. His last major work I think.
Thanks for the warning about the styrofoam. However, I was thinking about maybe putting the combined best bits of the Stravinsky Warner box with the best of the Deutsche Grammophon box utilising the space available after removal of said floatation devices. And what do DG do?! - they enclose TWO floatation devices in a card boxes and glue them to the sides of the carton, which makes it such a tight squeeze that it is difficult to remove any of the contents without removing them all!! I can see that I'll need to use surgery to remove the styrofoam. Thanks for the informative and knowledgeable review David.
Probably the best box set that I have as far as quality of printed material is concerned, is Sony's Perrahia set. It has ALL of the original liner notes from the original albums. There's NO excuse other than cost, which shouldn't make too much difference as they already have the notes and these boxes are already expensive, for these big box sets to include notes.
I turn to the "Pulcinella" suite for a quick fix and a few pieces without the vocals are a good alternative., Even Stravinsky recorded it for Sony. DG has one of the best ones by Orpheus that came on the same disc as the 8 instrumental miniatures which made the box. To me, that is an omission that doesn't make sense. It would have been nice for them to include the Pianola thinks for completion. Wasn't his fourth etude for orchestra "Madrid" a pianola original? I have a music disc of it with the "Petrushka" and "Rite " transcriptions...Maybe not essential to some, but considering some of the things they did include.
Holy cow, the horrendous Concerto in D finally receiving the “praise” it rightly deserves! Thank you, Dave. It’s definitely the most obnoxious thing Stravinsky ever penned. Paul Sacher didn’t ask for his money back just because he had way too much of it.
@@murraylow4523 Sacher is one the most important figures of the 20th Century Music! I couldn’t be more grateful to him. He commissioned such masterpieces as Bartok’s Divertimento and Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, Martinu’s Double Concerto and Toccata e Due Canzoni, Honegger’s Symphonies nos. 2 and 4... the list goes on and on.
@@adrianosbrandao Its nice to agree. Incidentally I have a lovely hardback book here put out by the Paul Sacher Foundation about Stravinsky. Its full of rather marvellous examples of his writing and handwritten scores - Stravinsky's "score calligraphy" is really fun to see - I guess they look after a lot of his stuff in Basle....
Oh, and I'm actually pleased that they put the Mutter/ Sacher Violin concerto in the DG box. Understand where Dave is coming from there but its really a good performance on the spectrum of performance there, and Sacher shows he was no mean conductor
I notice that Sony are about to release an original jackets set of the Bernstein Stravinsky recordings, so for people like me who picked up the fantastic (Sony) Boulez, Tilson Thomas, Abbado, Knussen and Maazel recordings he recommended, these hard to find recordings should finish things off nicely.
Thanks Dave. Going through that must have felt like singing Tom Lehrer's The Elements! I have the earlier release and I'm very happy with it, at price its not unreasonable not to get all the texts and translations. Agree that maybe leaning on the Boulez for the early ballets is contestable, but they're not at all bad (we are so spoiled) and on those most people will already have some recording they prefer. What matters more is all the other stuff which is, as you say, surprisingly excellent. In the States for 60 bucks, gees, ok you dont get the translations of the songs etc, but if you did it'd be 3x as much I'd have thought. Just been listening to a review of the Warner offering on BBC Radio 3 and it doesn't sound anything like as impressive.... If people don't have most of Stravinsky I'd really recommend getting it while the price is so ludicrously low....
No thank you... If Universal is too lazy to provide us with a decent edition, including extensive text and translation, then I'm too lazy to go buy it. However, there's a huge new Ormandy box out, with a nice book! Waiting for that one impatiently because it will only be available for about a week here in Europe...
I cant think of other big boxes that give you all the texts and translations at anything like that price so its not so much a corporate failing (or laziness) as making a vast number of excellent recordings available in a way most people can hear them. The booklet is interesting and well-done. I'm not sure Stravinsky was that interested in lyrics anyhow, hence the deliberate alienation in his Latin pieces....
@@murraylow4523 fair point. And please enjoy it to the fullest, it contains indeed a lot of excellent recordings. But I feel that a label like DG, with many excellent composer editions in the past can do much better. We, the public, can be more demanding if we want the physical medium to survive. Just my thoughts... You may disagree
@@BVcello Like you I wish it weren't so. But this is in the format of the previous Liszt, Schumann, Wagner etc cubes they did and you don't get any of the lyrics there (as I recall). I'm not so happy with the Wagner cube as I am with the others but I'm glad I was actually able to afford them! Their Messiaen box (again, excellent) is probably the exception, but I was pretty surprised to see they did the texts and translations in there. Doesn't seem to exist on UK Amazon any more....
I'm used to getting bargain priced boxes of choral works and/or operas that don't provide texts and can live without them because I can usually find plot summaries and lyrics online. But it would be nice if other companies would make PDF files with lyrics available for download like Supraphon did with its Dvorak choral works box.
On the subject of texts, I prefer that they be included in the box, and I would be willing to pay a little extra for them. If the labels think that would make the price of the box prohibitive, then having the texts available for download as pdf files is the next best solution. Some labels do make some of their texts available for download, but availability seems inconsistent from box to box even within the same label. As for the current box, I think I'll take a pass. Most of the recordings Dave read to us are good-to-excellent, but I already have well over half of the recordings in the box (and alternative recordings of nearly all of the remaining pieces in the box).
Just a question: Might you be following up your review of Martin Helmchen's Beethoven 1 and 4 with reviewing the other cds he made completing his Beethoven piano concerto cycle? I believe those other cds have been released...Thanks in advance!
When I opened my DG Stravinsky box yesterday and saw 1/3 of the box consisted of styrofoam packing I said "WTF". Now they are on my shit list. The Warner Stravinsky box is out there and is more intelligently packaged and is only 7 discs less.
@@kend.6797 Its 22 discs i think and an awful lot of IS will be left out. Plus I suspect the ballet performances are even worse than on the DG one (although the Boulez ones are pretty good, in broader perspective)
@@kend.6797 And seriously. They're on your "shit list" for delivering the largest collection of Stravinsky there has ever been?! Who cares about the styrofoam....
@@murraylow4523 I was being facetious. BUT much of this recent DG product has been poor quality, so yeah they aren't high on my list. This box is nowhere near the biggest box of Stravinsky that has been put out. Hyperbole much?
As soon as I bought it, I removed the Firebird and Sacre by Boulez and replaced them with Ozawa's Sacre with CSO and Von Dohnanyi's Firebird with WPO. The value of this box will increase of a considerable amount!! Thank you Dave!
I hope you listened to them first. I got the box yesterday, listened to the first 2 discs and thought they were terrific. Sound is demonstration quality.
No need to be persnickety, i suppose, but does anyòne else notice that around 13:00, DH says "Nutcracker" rather than "Firebird"? Lots of Tschaikovskiy on the brain, apparently...
@@DavesClassicalGuide Well for me, a wide range may mean 15-20 additional recordings. I can't buy everything. But I would like to hear your discussion of why you feel Stravinsky's own recordings are less adequate than other people's. I recall that on the video discussing Stravinsky ballets, you never mentioned any of the composer's own versions.
The Boston Symphony Chamber “L’ histoire du soldat” is a jewel.
I had it on cassette when I was a teenager and pretty much wore it out.. So good to hear it again. I know the Markevich thats also in there is a great performance but with this (magnificent) work, if you're not francophone, you really need it in English. And Gielgud, Courtenay and Ron Moody?! How did they do that?
The "raft of foam" can be used for the..Stravinsky's Flood..!!
... also handy in the event of an Oedipus Wreck.
@@ftumschk :Not as necessary for Oedipus Tex, though----> not a lot of water left in the Cambrian Basin in western Texas...
I suspect the Bernstein IPO Petrushka is listed as an orchestral work because Bernstein used the 1947 edition. For whatever reason, DG is treating the 1947 as an orchestral piece distinct from the 1911 stage version, which doesn't make sense. Stravinsky created the Petrushka Suite for concert performances. He still treated the 1947 revision as a ballet.
Thats a very sensible rationalisation, thanks. I think Dave overdoes it a bit on this set's "completeness" as there's pretty much nothing beside some arrangements missing. But it is odd that they didn't put a "Pulcinella" suite in there, in line with the various Petrushka and Firebird things. Universal certainly have some good versions of that, and you don't always want to listen to the vocal material....
The styrofoam insert is just classic. Maybe I can remove it and shove some old baseball cards in there. Overall this seems like a very artfully blended box. Plenty of great Boulez, who had a real Vulcan mind meld with Stravinsky. I also think the Bernstein Symphonies in C And Three Movements with the Israel Phil are the best out there, spiky but still somehow beautifully tender at times. I’m very impressed with this selection; were I in the big box market right now I’d snap this right up. The Orpheus Chamber Orchestra recordings are worth the price of admission alone.
i think the foam is there so you can make your own foam ear plugs for the Sacrificial Dance music.
I have multiple good versions of the most famous Stravinsky ballets and recordings of a handful of other works like the Symphony of Palms and the Symphony in C. Without the duplication it's only 5 or 6 discs of music, so at the price this box was a no brainer to get a decent or better version of most of the rest of his output. I should be able to toss the flotation devices and stick the Stravinsky CDs I already have in the box.
Don, Dave is exaggerating ever so slightly by saying it isn't complete. All that might matter that isn't there is a recording of the Pulcinella suite (surprising they didn't include one on the second go), a Petrushka suite (unlike him I don't see the point of that anyways), Tchaikovsky arrangements etc. And some of the violin and piano stuff he did with Samuel Dushkin. Thats easy to rectify as theres a great Hyperion set with Thomas Ades on piano doing all that. But theres enough of that in this set anyhow to keep anyone happy.... The omissions are really tiny things at the margins, and I envy you hearing all that stuff you havent heard before in such good performances.
@@murraylow4523 I got my box on Sunday and have listened to the first couple of discs with Boulez/Cleveland doing The Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring. They are outstanding recordings to me; the sound is demonstration quality. I don't see a problem with the packaging. It works fine with the styrofoam insert in or out and fits in a stack of normal jewel cases on a shelf just fine. Complaining about this packaging is a real first world problem. I look forward to hearing all this new music and don't really care if there are a few scraps not in the box. Stravinsky was probably the biggest hole in my CD collection of any major composer and this was a no brainer purchase for me.
@@Don-md6wn They are really very good. I think Dave is right about how one tends to drift off in listening to the Firebird. Its an early work after all and I do prefer to listen to it in Suite form. But, speaking of first world problems, if we're at the point of complaining about Boulez' DG Petrushka and Rite, well, its getting a bit silly. They are excellent sonically and as performances. I was lucky enough before all of this isolation to hear and see both Boulez and Tilson-Thomas do the Rite at the BBC Proms. Both were excellent but somehow the Boulez was darker and more mysterious (might have something to do with the general sound of the San Francisco Symphony in this sort of repertoire, brighter and maybe a bit more flashy).
But the thing is, Stravinsky was like Picasso as just about everyone says, he changed his style a lot and somehow always just sounded like Stravinsky! So, in there, you can really experience that (the Warner box doesn't do it). Even the Concerto in D Dave doesnt like is highly entertaining in there, Mutter's Violin Concerto is really pretty good (and has Paul Sacher, one of the most important Stravinsky commissioners along with commissioning works by other people, conducting very well). The Ebony Concerto, which is sort of fake cool jazz is very well done by Boulez and co., which you might not expect. You might not like the late works, where he was using serialism as a model, but I'd recommend the "Requiem Canticles" - very Stravinsky but also very different. His last major work I think.
Thanks for the warning about the styrofoam. However, I was thinking about maybe putting the combined best bits of the Stravinsky Warner box with the best of the Deutsche Grammophon box utilising the space available after removal of said floatation devices. And what do DG do?! - they enclose TWO floatation devices in a card boxes and glue them to the sides of the carton, which makes it such a tight squeeze that it is difficult to remove any of the contents without removing them all!! I can see that I'll need to use surgery to remove the styrofoam.
Thanks for the informative and knowledgeable review David.
Probably the best box set that I have as far as quality of printed material is concerned, is Sony's Perrahia set. It has ALL of the original liner notes from the original albums. There's NO excuse other than cost, which shouldn't make too much difference as they already have the notes and these boxes are already expensive, for these big box sets to include notes.
I turn to the "Pulcinella" suite for a quick fix and a few pieces without the vocals are a good alternative., Even Stravinsky recorded it for Sony. DG has one of the best ones by Orpheus that came on the same disc as the 8 instrumental miniatures which made the box. To me, that is an omission that doesn't make sense. It would have been nice for them to include the Pianola thinks for completion. Wasn't his fourth etude for orchestra "Madrid" a pianola original? I have a music disc of it with the "Petrushka" and "Rite " transcriptions...Maybe not essential to some, but considering some of the things they did include.
Holy cow, the horrendous Concerto in D finally receiving the “praise” it rightly deserves! Thank you, Dave. It’s definitely the most obnoxious thing Stravinsky ever penned. Paul Sacher didn’t ask for his money back just because he had way too much of it.
I think its quite good! And we should perhaps be grateful to Paul Sacher (and his Swiss Francs) for all that commissioning, no?
@@murraylow4523 Sacher is one the most important figures of the 20th Century Music! I couldn’t be more grateful to him. He commissioned such masterpieces as Bartok’s Divertimento and Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta, Martinu’s Double Concerto and Toccata e Due Canzoni, Honegger’s Symphonies nos. 2 and 4... the list goes on and on.
@@adrianosbrandao Its nice to agree. Incidentally I have a lovely hardback book here put out by the Paul Sacher Foundation about Stravinsky. Its full of rather marvellous examples of his writing and handwritten scores - Stravinsky's "score calligraphy" is really fun to see - I guess they look after a lot of his stuff in Basle....
Oh, and I'm actually pleased that they put the Mutter/ Sacher Violin concerto in the DG box. Understand where Dave is coming from there but its really a good performance on the spectrum of performance there, and Sacher shows he was no mean conductor
Hi David. Would you consider doing a talk on the best recordings of Berlioz’s Romeo et Juliette?
I notice that Sony are about to release an original jackets set of the Bernstein Stravinsky recordings, so for people like me who picked up the fantastic (Sony) Boulez, Tilson Thomas, Abbado, Knussen and Maazel recordings he recommended, these hard to find recordings should finish things off nicely.
Thanks Dave. Going through that must have felt like singing Tom Lehrer's The Elements! I have the earlier release and I'm very happy with it, at price its not unreasonable not to get all the texts and translations. Agree that maybe leaning on the Boulez for the early ballets is contestable, but they're not at all bad (we are so spoiled) and on those most people will already have some recording they prefer. What matters more is all the other stuff which is, as you say, surprisingly excellent.
In the States for 60 bucks, gees, ok you dont get the translations of the songs etc, but if you did it'd be 3x as much I'd have thought. Just been listening to a review of the Warner offering on BBC Radio 3 and it doesn't sound anything like as impressive....
If people don't have most of Stravinsky I'd really recommend getting it while the price is so ludicrously low....
I'll pass on the box, but could use the foam🤣
No thank you... If Universal is too lazy to provide us with a decent edition, including extensive text and translation, then I'm too lazy to go buy it. However, there's a huge new Ormandy box out, with a nice book! Waiting for that one impatiently because it will only be available for about a week here in Europe...
I cant think of other big boxes that give you all the texts and translations at anything like that price so its not so much a corporate failing (or laziness) as making a vast number of excellent recordings available in a way most people can hear them. The booklet is interesting and well-done. I'm not sure Stravinsky was that interested in lyrics anyhow, hence the deliberate alienation in his Latin pieces....
@@murraylow4523 fair point. And please enjoy it to the fullest, it contains indeed a lot of excellent recordings. But I feel that a label like DG, with many excellent composer editions in the past can do much better. We, the public, can be more demanding if we want the physical medium to survive. Just my thoughts... You may disagree
@@BVcello Like you I wish it weren't so. But this is in the format of the previous Liszt, Schumann, Wagner etc cubes they did and you don't get any of the lyrics there (as I recall). I'm not so happy with the Wagner cube as I am with the others but I'm glad I was actually able to afford them!
Their Messiaen box (again, excellent) is probably the exception, but I was pretty surprised to see they did the texts and translations in there. Doesn't seem to exist on UK Amazon any more....
I'm used to getting bargain priced boxes of choral works and/or operas that don't provide texts and can live without them because I can usually find plot summaries and lyrics online. But it would be nice if other companies would make PDF files with lyrics available for download like Supraphon did with its Dvorak choral works box.
On the subject of texts, I prefer that they be included in the box, and I would be willing to pay a little extra for them. If the labels think that would make the price of the box prohibitive, then having the texts available for download as pdf files is the next best solution. Some labels do make some of their texts available for download, but availability seems inconsistent from box to box even within the same label.
As for the current box, I think I'll take a pass. Most of the recordings Dave read to us are good-to-excellent, but I already have well over half of the recordings in the box (and alternative recordings of nearly all of the remaining pieces in the box).
I believe they release a lot of Stravinsky now because it is fifty years since he passed away.
I assume so. Silly reason.
Just a question: Might you be following up your review of Martin Helmchen's Beethoven 1 and 4 with reviewing the other cds he made completing his Beethoven piano concerto cycle? I believe those other cds have been released...Thanks in advance!
that's the plan,
Looking forward to hearing that... Thanks!
When I opened my DG Stravinsky box yesterday and saw 1/3 of the box consisted of styrofoam packing I said "WTF". Now they are on my shit list. The Warner Stravinsky box is out there and is more intelligently packaged and is only 7 discs less.
The Warner box is certainly much worse. Are you really making a styrofoam decision?
@@murraylow4523 no it's not, and yes, I am.
@@kend.6797 Its 22 discs i think and an awful lot of IS will be left out. Plus I suspect the ballet performances are even worse than on the DG one (although the Boulez ones are pretty good, in broader perspective)
@@kend.6797 And seriously. They're on your "shit list" for delivering the largest collection of Stravinsky there has ever been?! Who cares about the styrofoam....
@@murraylow4523 I was being facetious. BUT much of this recent DG product has been poor quality, so yeah they aren't high on my list. This box is nowhere near the biggest box of Stravinsky that has been put out. Hyperbole much?
As soon as I bought it, I removed the Firebird and Sacre by Boulez and replaced them with Ozawa's Sacre with CSO and Von Dohnanyi's Firebird with WPO. The value of this box will increase of a considerable amount!! Thank you Dave!
I hope you listened to them first. I got the box yesterday, listened to the first 2 discs and thought they were terrific. Sound is demonstration quality.
@@Don-md6wn nothing compared to the above versions, as suggested by Dave!
@@michelangelomulieri5134 I've got the Dohnanyi Firebird and still enjoyed the Boulez. I'm happy to have both.
It's too bad you don't have a "floral scarf of foam" for this set.
No need to be persnickety, i suppose, but does anyòne else notice that around 13:00, DH says "Nutcracker" rather than "Firebird"? Lots of Tschaikovskiy on the brain, apparently...
Whoops. I guess so.
I think the big Stravinsky box on Sony is more valuable to have.
Historically, yes, but musically, the DG is much better for the most part.
@@DavesClassicalGuide I supplement the Sony with a wide range of recordings by other performers.
@@lawrencerinkel3243 So do I. I think that's the ideal way to go if you have the space and can afford it.
@@DavesClassicalGuide Well for me, a wide range may mean 15-20 additional recordings. I can't buy everything. But I would like to hear your discussion of why you feel Stravinsky's own recordings are less adequate than other people's. I recall that on the video discussing Stravinsky ballets, you never mentioned any of the composer's own versions.
@@lawrencerinkel3243 To be fair, I think it's pretty self-evident on even a cursory listening.