The record industry continues to enrich the buying public by rummaging around in copious back catalogs and re-issuing worthy stuff from the past. Just recently I picked up a number of spiffy box sets:
- Furtwängler: The Great EMI Recordings (21 CDs)
- Icon: William Steinberg (20 CDs)
- Charles Munch: Romantic Masterworks/Late Romantic Masterpieces (two sets, 16 CDs total)
- Icon: Artur Rubinstein (early EMI recordings; 5 CDs)
- Sir Thomas Beecham: French Music/English Music (two sets; 12 CDs)
- Carlo Maria Giulini: Giulini in America/Giulini Chicago Recordings (three sets; 15 CDs altogether)
I read with interest of the brand-new Leonard Bernstein "symphonies" set from Sony. Quite a bargain. I'm quite the sucker for box sets; I have the complete Karajan on EMI (two giant boxes), the Heifetz Original Jacket set (130 CDs), the Glenn Gould Original Jacket set (some gawdawful amount of stuff) and a lot more. I just love acquiring complete things, and today's spate of inexpensive but well-remastered CDs suit me to an audiophiliac T.
But other ears might hear a different march. They can argue that big fat sets like the EMI "Icon" series or whatnot are taking up a disproportionate amount of energy on the part of the recording companies, and just might be edging out newer performances. The amount of vitriol accompanying such opinions directly matches the enmity of a particular commentator to a particular performer or conductor. A big fat Herbert von Karajan set will be met with delight by Karajan afficionados and contempt (or worse) by folks for whom Karajan is the illegitimate spawn of Satan by Hitler. Ditto Furtwängler, Toscanini, or whomever.
It's true that the current record industry seems to have an almost morbid fixation on past accomplishments. But that's really a cup half empty/half full situation. The fact is that the collective record companies have created an astonishing body of magnificent work over the course of the past century. Best of breed stuff lies in quantity throughout those catalogs, and there's simply no point in letting any of it go unheard by the latest generations. Just as there will always be kids to fall in love with The Wizard of Oz, there will always be new listeners discovering the joys of Reiner/Chicago or Szell/Cleveland or Gould or Rubinstein or Heifetz or Rachmaninoff or Callas or Tebali or Bernstein. The record companies are doing us all a great service by ensuring that those achievements remain within reach. Since the original production costs are long recouped (or at least absorbed), the CDs can be sold at fire-sale prices.
Consider "Leonard Bernstein: The Symphony Edition." 60 CDs for $119.00 plus shipping. That's just amazing—$2 per disc. To be sure, those records have been around for a good long time. But who cares at these prices? Bernstein isn't the familiar figure to younger folk that he was to those of my generation. Even if the NY Phil was sometimes a downright unruly orchestra and ran a distant fifth place (in my opinion) to the era's biggies (Chicago, Cleveland, Boston, Philadelphia) there is some outrageously wonderful playing tucked into those discs.
Which brings me to the changing orchestral landscape. Neither the Boston nor Philadelphia orchestras are what they were in the 1950s through 1970s. Philadelphia under Ormandy was practically a cultural institution, a regular and steady friend for record collectors across several generations. Boston under Munch had to be one of the great all-time symbioses, a glorious orchestra led by a superb musician and recorded as well as the technology of the day allowed. I have little to no interest in collecting present-day Boston Symphony recordings; they lost me a good 30 years ago, in fact. MTT's early outings with the Boston are just about the last in my collection. But the older Boston Symphony—Koussevitzky on 78s, Munch first in mono and then stereo, some of the Leinsdorf stuff (although that wasn't all that great an era for the BSO, either.) And Philadelphia—well, give me Stokowski, give me Ormandy.
It's really like having your cake and eating it, too. You can hear Bruno Walter's New York Philharmonic, then turn right around and dig into some Alan Gilbert.
And it isn't as though there's some horrible dearth of new recordings. Portents of doom notwithstanding, lots and lots of new recordings keep appearing. It doesn't look to me as though Furtwängler and the Berlin of yesteryear are suppressing Rattle and today's Philharmonic.
So let a million box sets bloom!