ウェブプレーヤーを開く
この商品をチェックした人はこんな商品もチェックしています
ページ 1 以下のうち 1 最初から観るページ 1 以下のうち 1
他の国からのトップレビュー
Matthew T. Weflen
A fabulous "beginning library" of classical music, great audio quality
2018年5月19日にアメリカ合衆国でレビュー済みAmazonで購入
Matthew T. Weflen
2018年5月19日にアメリカ合衆国でレビュー済み
I see several reviews here that compare recordings from this or that conductor, this or that era. Although these are valuable, I won't be doing that (I can't). I'm going to review this from the perspective of a relative neophyte to classical music. I've always liked it: I go with my wife and two boys to free concerts in Downtown Chicago; I've gone on a few CSO dates with my wife, and prior to this I owned perhaps 7 or 8 discs or sets of music, mainly Brahms and Johann Strauss. But I never dove in and tried to familiarize myself with a broad survey of the greats. That's where this purchase comes in.
I am also going to review this from the perspective of someone who wants to rip all of the music to FLAC files, for play on my Sony AW-45 Hi-Res; music player, for critical listening mainly through my Sony MDR-1000x noise canceling headphones, but also frequently through my Bose SoundTouch 20 speaker in the dining room.
SELECTION
I weighed acquiring this set against the Karajan 1960s set by DGG and the Warner Karajan Complete Remastered Edition 1 set. Why von Karajan, you might ask? I don't have an elaborate justification that compares the pros and cons of various conductors and symphonies, just the fact that I owned and enjoyed DGG's "Complete Brahms Symphonies" 2cd set, conducted by him, and whenever I heard other conductors on those pieces, I never liked them as much. The other factor was the relative newness of the recordings and remasterings. I wanted excellent sound quality for my new music player. The Warner set apparently has copy protection on a good half of the discs, as well, so that was a non-starter for me.
So here we have 78 discs. You get complete Beethoven and Brahms symphony cycles, which I'm a big fan of. You also get a lot of Haydn, Richard Strauss, and a nice spate of popular works like Johann Strauss' waltzes, Holst's The Planets, Tchaikovsky's popular stuff as well as symphonies. If there is any beef I have with selection, it's that it is very heavy on Haydn, while it is missing a lot of Mozart and is quite light on Wagner and Sibelius as well. Of course I realize that the set is dictated by what von Karajan recorded in that decade, I am just commenting from the perspective of someone who wants to get a "complete library." I will likely be purchasing some of DGG's sets of Karajan's Mozart, Vivaldi, and probably a non-Karajan set of Brahms' chamber music (quartets, quintets, sextets).
PHYSICAL EXPERIENCE
You're paying a premium for a set like this, so what is the physical experience like?
Although some reviewers have complained about poor shipping, my set (directly from Amazon) was packaged very securely in a larger box with a foam lining. The box is heavy and sturdy, and does not ding easily. Inside are a large softcover book with interviews and disc contents, some replica studio sheets (in German, not terribly interesting to me), and four large cardboard bins, with open tops. These bins house the 78 discs. Each disc is in a replica paper sleeve, showing album artwork (front and back). Each disc looks like a little vinyl record. It's all very charming. Personally, I'm glad there are not 78 jewel cases here, as it would significantly bulk up an already 6 pound set, as well as risk breakage 78 times over. I like the act of flipping through discs as if they are mini-LPs (I am not a vinyl person at all, I just enjoy the physical act of flipping through and looking at art). The book is nice, and does have an index by composer at the end, but a lot of space is taken up by German, Japanese, and Korean language versions of the interviews. Instead of the brief included timeline, I would rather have had a long biography in English, and had sets that were localized for each region. Oh, well. The interviews, with Anne-Sophie Mutter and DGG producer Gunther Breest, are interesting. I just wish I could have gotten more about von Karajan's rivalry with Furtwangler, his membership in the Nazi party, his comeback after the war, and so on.
All in all, the physical experience of this set is quite impressive. DGG really knows how to make a set that feels like you got what you paid for. It is a pleasure to thumb through all the discs, and it's packaged in an imposing, attractive edifice.
RIPPING AND LISTENING
There is no copy protection on any of the discs. I used Exact Audio Copy on a Windows PC to create FLAC copies of each CD. All told, the entire set came out to about 20gb in FLAC, which is not bad at all. If you choose 320kbps mp3 rips, you will probably be looking at 12 or 13gb. The discs I received were in pristine condition, which made ripping a breeze. The CD info database for EAC had track info for every disc, so that was easy. There is not a good repository of cover art, however. DGG's website has a few covers, but not a comprehensive list. So I had to cobble together a collection of jpegs from Google Images, and there were a few for which an exact match could not be found for the sleeve.
Listening to the FLAC files I created vindicated my decision to go with this set. The sound quality is absolutely stellar. Disc 1, R. Strauss' Eine Alpensinfonie, was incredibly rich and detailed. The deep, low hum of the cellos and bassoons in the final track, "Nacht," was extremely impressive. Disc 32 includes Beethoven's Fifth, which is extremely bombastic and can show the weaknesses of an audio master, came through with perfect clarity - both the booming brass and the delicate strings, even at the same time. I've sampled a good thirty discs so far, and have not come across anything that made me have any reservations or regrets.
CONCLUSION
I don't give out 5 stars very often. But I was bowled over by this set. I'm obsessed with listening to the music, and I love flipping through the disc sleeves. At about $2.25 per disc, I think this is a pretty strong value. The selection is good (with a few gaps), the sound quality is excellent, and the presentation is top-notch. I think this is a marvelous start to someone's deeper exploration of classical music. It would be a fabulous gift, and of course is a great buy for one's self.
UPDATE
After 8 months and a lot of listening, as well as supplementing this collection with other purchases, I have some more perspective on it.
First of all, I have gotten tons of use out of the music here, and it has, I think, noticeably improved my life. Retreating into beauty is a wonderful tonic for the angst of our age.
Looking back, though, I wonder about different routes I could have taken to build a “good music collection.” What I have ultimately done is buy other smaller Karajan sets, with a few from other conductors, to supplement the 1980s set. The ones that have received the most play are Mendelssohn Symphonies 1-5, Mozart’s later symphonies, Vivaldi’s 4 seasons, Beethoven’s Overtures, Karajan’s 1977 Beethoven Cycle (his best in my opinion) and Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos. This ended up being $73 in additional purchases. Now, the 1970’s box set does contain most of these pieces, but it seems to consistently retail for twice what the 1980s set does, which still ends up favoring separate purchases. The 1960s box set has all of this save for Mendelssohn, which is an amazing cycle. But it’s only a bit more expensive than 1980s. The 1980s set seems to have Haydn in its favor. Now, personally, Haydn is a bit too Baroque for me, very syncopated and sing-song. So I could see getting either 1960s or 1980s as a starting point.
The set that really kind of haunts me is the Karajan Symphony Edition. That set contains complete or significant cycles for Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Haydn, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky. It can be found for around 60 bucks. That is an INCREDIBLE deal, and it does indeed comprise the bulk of what I listen to repeatedly.
The sticking points are the Strausses – the Josephs and Richard Strauss. There are several good collections of both that one can acquire in bargain priced sets from DG. So you’re looking at about 40 bucks of additional spending if you want to supplement the Symphony Edition.
I guess this is all a long way of saying that DG has monetized its Karajan library in several different ways, and you should perhaps do some research before taking the plunge. I think if I had it to do again I would get the Symphony Edition with two Strauss sets as a complement.
With that said, the 1980s set still represents a considerable bargain. It consistently costs less than the other two sets, and I do get a lot of use out of it still, even considering my supplementary purchases. It has all the Strauss you can shake a stick at, very good complete Beethoven and Brahms cycles, tons of Haydn, Tchaikovsky, and a lot of Bruckner, some terrific Wagner overtures, very good non-symphonic Mozart, and a lot of odds and ends that would be tough to assemble separately like Debussy, Verdi, Bizet, Pachelbel, Grieg, and Holst.
So I still heartily recommend it as a starting point. But either of the other two sets (60s and 70s) would probably do just as well as a one-shot "deep dive" purchase.
このレビューの画像
Dr. Tim Parker
Superb collection of Karajn's later recordings; a fitting tribute to the man.
2015年7月2日にカナダでレビュー済みAmazonで購入
Dominique.bayle
une grande (redecouverte)
2015年4月21日にフランスでレビュー済みAmazonで購入
Giacomo
Terza parte di una serie da collezione
2014年12月7日にイタリアでレビュー済みAmazonで購入
Dr. Curmudgeon
Delightful, and lacking the negative qualities I was fearing.
2014年12月17日にアメリカ合衆国でレビュー済みAmazonで購入
