NOW THAT’S A MUSICAL BOX...
Luciano Pavarotti The Complete Opera Recordings ★★★★★ Georg Solti Chicago: The Complete Recordings ★★★★★
Why not give someone you love Pav arotti for Christmas? You better love them lots though, because this package will set you back about €170.
But what a package it is. Thirty-six complete operas, beginning with an early Bohème from 1961, and ending with a 1996 I Lombardi from New York that I walked through a blizzard to see live. And it was well worth it.
There are also eight duplicates, where Pavarotti opted to rerecord these operas with a fresh, and almost always, improved look.
As with his beautifully upholstered 1971 Berlin Bohème with Herbert von Karajan, a total contrast to the 1961 rough-and-ready live recording from Modena.
Though that latter one offers an opportunity to hear Pavarotti before international fame beckoned.
There are 101 discs included here, which offer a lifetime of listening pleasure.
There’s also a 250page hard-covered book, with all the recordings lovingly detailed, and lots of photographs.
The whole package weighs 4.5kg – entirely appropriate that a fabulous singer with such a great girth should have one of the biggest boxes around.
Pavarotti was the greatest tenor of our time. And it’s all here. Sir Georg Solti’s illustrious career took him all over the world, but nowhere was he happier than in his 22 years at the helm of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra during the Seventies and Eighties. The fruits of his labours can be found in another Decca bargain box, this time with 108 CDs retailing at about €230. Again, a formidable bargain. There are complete Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner and Mahler symphony cycles, and a Beethoven piano cycle
‘Pavarotti was the greatest tenor of our time – and it’s all here’
with Vladimir Ashkenazy, all in excellent sound.
Thirty-six composers are featured in all, including some notable Bartok, Shostakovich, and Wagner.
Again there’s a fine photofilled book, making this another Decca box that does full justice to its contents.
That’s your Christmas stocking fillers taken care of!