More Mozart Than You Can Shake a Baton At (NYT)

[spindrifter]

By DANIEL J. WAKIN
Published: September 4, 2006

You can cradle it in your hands, this small shoe-box-size container filled with one of humankind’s greatest creative achievements.

It is a complete edition of Mozart’s works, 170 CD’s in color-coded paper sleeves: aquamarine for opera, purple for sacred works, orange for concertos, yellow for symphonies and so on. Inside the top of the container is a list of contents, like the descriptions of nuts and creams in a chocolate box. Program notes and texts fill a separate CD-ROM.

Issued by a small Dutch label, Brilliant Classics, “Mozart Edition, Complete Works” coincides, naturally, with the (grit teeth here) 250th anniversary of that composer’s birth. The celebration has been exhaustively chronicled; consider this a last gasp of commem-o-philia.

The set’s list price is $150, and it sells for $120 on Amazon.com, or about 70 cents a disc. Only several thousand have been sold in the United States, where it had a hitch in its distribution, but the collection is a hit in Europe, said Pieter van Winkel, the label’s director. Nearly 300,000 sets have been sold there since the release late last year, more than half in France alone, he said.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/04/arts/music/04moza.html?_r=1&ref=music&oref=slogin

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I'm thinking about it! It would be so cool to have that chest of color-coded disks!

[Rabrrrrrr]

1. But are the recordings well done, and are the performances good?

That's my worry with a full collection that is that cheap.

[spindrifter]

2. It's hard to say, and probably depends in part on your

ear. The article implies that the performances are well done, but by relative unknown artists. I do not have a very discriminating ear. I listen purely for pleasure and like to have something on all the time, whether it is classical or my true love, international music. So for someone like me this is probably ok. I haven't decided whether I will really buy the set, though.

[tjwmason]

3. Exactly.

Cheap recordings can be useful to introduce one to something totally new - but one would hardly put Mozart in that column.