Big Bernstein and solitary Schubert
We take a look at some of the month’s most appealing box-sets
Few conductors have immersed themselves as deeply in the music of Leonard Bernstein as has Marin Alsop, a pupil of the composer and conductor in the late 1980s. Alsop has recorded many of Bernstein’s major works with the Bournemouth, Baltimore and São Paulo symphony orchestras and, to mark this year’s centenary of his birth, Naxos has collected them together in a nine-disc Leonard Bernstein – 1918
1990 set (8.508018). As well as the three symphonies, shorter orchestral works, and the ebullient Mass, the set also includes a DVD of leading musicians, including Alsop, sharing their appreciation of the great man.
On a much more intimate scale is Paul
Badura-skoda Plays Schubert, RCA’S 12-disc box set containing the complete sonatas, recorded from 1967-71 (88985395492). Given the acclaim that the Viennese pianist enjoyed on the cycle’s original release, many of the recordings may well already be familiar to dedicated pianophiles. All, though, have been remastered, and a bonus comes in the shape of three further discs of recordings that were made by Badura-skoda in 1971 but have never previously appeared on disc.
Heading further back into the 20th century, we come to Sony’s Juilliard String Quartet – The Complete EPIC Recordings 1956-66
(88985470132). Well-known works by the likes of Haydn, Mozart, Mendelssohn and Brahms fill the bulk of set’s 11 CDS, and they are joined by pianist Leon Fleisher for Brahms’s Quintets. The CD of quartets by US composers Benjamin Lees and William Denny, the first recording made by the group for the American label, is a welcome rarity.
The Juilliard’s set contains two discs of Beethoven. Brilliant Classics’s chunky Beethoven Complete
Edition (95510) presents 85 CDS of the German’s music. This is a set to dip in and out of, as not all of the performances are a stellar quality, though you will find names such as pianist Alfred Brendel (in the concertos and a number of sonatas), flautist Jean-pierre Rampal, tenor Peter Schreier and the Staatskapelle
Dresden in there.
Alsop has recorded many of Bernstein’s major works