{"title":"Classics Direct — Box Sets","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"various-artists-piano-library-westminster-american-decca-edition-21cd-box-set","title":"Piano Library - Westminster \u0026 American Decca Edition (21CD Box Set)","description":"\u003cp\u003eAn Original Jackets treasury of analogue-era pianism by legendary and lesser-known names from the catalogues of American Decca and Westminster. 21-CD Limited Edition.\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Various Artists","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49688534057244,"sku":"4843829","price":181.99,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0874\/0513\/4108\/files\/Various-Artists-Piano-Library-21-CD.png?v=1724307537"},{"product_id":"london-sinfonietta-david-atherton-vienna-from-mozart-to-schoenberg-13-cd-set","title":"Vienna – From Mozart to Schoenberg (13CD Box Set)","description":"\u003cp\u003eVienna, old and new, meet on this journey from Mozart to Schoenberg and then on to Berg, Weill, Gerhard and Ligeti with David Atherton and the London Sinfonietta. Central to this anthology is the pioneering set of music by Schoenberg recorded in 1973–74 critically acclaimed for its \"big line and attention to detail\" (Stereo Review) and for the \"mellow but well-detailed recording\" (Gramophone).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe London Sinfonietta is renowned across the world as one of the most adventurous groups commissioning and performing new music. From its inception, however, the Sinfonietta played the classics alongside new and avant-garde pieces, and this new Eloquence set traces the engagement of the group with the Viennese tradition.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt the centre of the set is the 5-LP survey of Schoenberg’s chamber music – from the early and Wagnerian \"Verklärte Nacht\" to the late \"Phantasy\" for violin and piano – which the Sinfonietta recorded in 1973-4 to mark the centenary of the composer’s birth. The recordings were bedded in by extensive performing experience, in a comprehensive concert series celebrating the music of Schoenberg and his Catalan student, Roberto Gerhard.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Sinfonietta’s co-founder David Atherton had come to know Gerhard at Cambridge, and so these recordings bear the stamp of authority, as well as thorough preparation. In a new interview for the set with note-writer Peter Quantrill, Atherton explains the genesis of the Sinfonietta as formed around the unique instrumentation of Schoenberg’s First Chamber Symphony. He and his colleagues shook up the London concert scene in the 1970s with their energy and commitment to modernist classics and living composers.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHowever, the Sinfonietta brought the same incisive musicianship to Mozart’s wind serenades and Schubert’s sacred music, as these Argo recordings testify. A further rarity is the album of clarinet concertos by Louis Spohr, with the ensemble’s long-standing clarinettist, Antony Pay, as soloist.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRecorded after a complete Stravinsky concert series, their version of Agon has long been recognised as a definitive account. The Gerhard album preserves all three of the composer’s late and exquisite Zodiac pieces, \"Gemini, Libra and Leo\", the last two named after the zodiacal signs of Gerhard and his wife.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe set also includes the 3-LP Weill set that Atherton and the Sinfonietta recorded for Deutsche Grammophon in 1975, and concludes with the Ligeti album recorded that same year by the ensemble for Decca’s 20th-century \u003cem\u003eHEAD\u003c\/em\u003e series with soloists Aurèle Nicolet (flute) and Heinz Holliger (oboe).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe set makes a significant contribution to the Schoenberg 150th anniversary year, as well as telling a compelling story of one of the UK’s most innovative performing ensembles.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"London Sinfonietta, David Atherton","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51030580953372,"sku":"4847297","price":124.99,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0874\/0513\/4108\/files\/4847297_Atherton_ExpldPackshot_d44e7593-1b91-4cd2-9ccf-27798f29b51a.jpg?v=1736786066"},{"product_id":"antal-dorati-philharmonia-hungarica-the-mercury-masters-8-cd-box-set","title":"The Mercury Masters (8CD Box Set)","description":"\u003cp\u003eDriving intensity, rhythmic flair and demonstration-quality sound are brought to the fore in a new anthology of Antal Doráti’s early recordings with the Philharmonia Hungarica on Mercury and Philips.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFounded in 1956, the Philharmonia Hungarica emerged from turbulent post-war times as a crack ensemble of émigré Hungarian musicians who had fled Communism for the West. While they gave concerts in Europe and the US, it was through these seven albums on Mercury and Philips that they became famous, and synonymous with the name of the conductor Antal Doráti.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTogether, Doráti and the Philharmonia Hungarica would go on to make a celebrated cycle of Haydn symphonies for Decca in the early 1970s. But these early recordings already demonstrate what a potent artistic combination they were, as forerunners both to that monument of gramophone history, and to the modern-day Budapest Festival Orchestra. As reviewers at the time remarked, the strings play with a particular unanimity and attack which sounds uniquely ‘Hungarian’.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA booklet essay by the music historian David Patmore tells the story of the Philharmonia Hungarica and their debut on record. All six Mercury albums were recorded at sessions in June 1958, held in the Vienna Konzerthaus: a spacious but analytical acoustic, well suited to the label’s trademark high-impact sound.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe repertoire played to the strengths of both label and musicians: mostly Hungarian music from the last half century, vividly coloured and coursing with rhythmic energy. There is an early taste of the ensemble’s feeling for Haydn, in the ‘Surprise’ and ‘Drum Roll’ Symphonies. Doráti’s established reputation as a masterful conductor of ballet brings a sweeping sense of line to a collection of Viennese waltzes. The ace in the pack of the Mercury\/Philharmonia Hungarica albums was Respighi’s suites of Ancient Airs and Dances, which soon became a demonstration disc for audiophiles worldwide.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNever previously collected together, this Mercury legacy is complemented by the two albums which the Philharmonia Hungarica and Doráti recorded for Philips. The ensemble’s first-ever recording, made in October 1957, appeared on the Fontana imprint, coupling Bartók’s Divertimento with Leo Weiner’s Hungarian Dances. From 1974, the second Philips album returns to Bartók, with gripping interpretations of the Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta and Dance Suite.\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Antal Doráti \u0026 Philharmonia Hungarica","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51030582853916,"sku":"4845517","price":74.99,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0874\/0513\/4108\/files\/Antal.png?v=1748923675"},{"product_id":"antal-dorati-in-london-volume-1-29cd-box-set","title":"Antal Doráti in London – Volume 1 (29CD Box Set)","description":"\u003cp\u003eCovering recordings from July 1956 to July 1961, here are early stereo spectaculars on Mercury, under the inspired baton of Antal Doráti: classic albums of Haydn, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky and many more in a new ‘Original Jackets’ Limited Edition. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEloquence has been making a systematic and critically acclaimed survey of the Mercury legacy of recordings made by the Hungarian conductor Antal Doráti. Boxes of his complete recordings with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra and the Philharmonia Hungarica have revived albums from the 1950s and 60s which set new standards for lifelike sound and intensely engaged performances in the recording studio.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eVolume 1 \u003c\/em\u003eof Doráti’s London recordings covers sessions from July 1956 to July 1961. Conductor and orchestra met for an intensive fortnight each year after the end of the concert season. Both the conductor and the Mercury engineers were demanding in their pursuit of perfection, in terms of orchestral attack, ensemble, balance, colour and all the disparate elements which contribute towards the kind of repeatability that made these albums such artistic and commercial successes.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThe repertoire for these Mercury sessions in London played to Dorati’s strengths. \u003cem\u003eVolume 1\u003c\/em\u003e includes library versions of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker and Stravinsky’s Firebird. Symphonies by Haydn (Nos. 45, 100 \u0026amp; 101) and Mozart (No. 40) are rhythmic and stylish. Anthologies of Verdi and Wagner orchestral music from operas tap into Dorati’s theatrical strengths, no less than ballet scores by Khachaturian (Gayaneh) and Copland (Appalachian Spring and Billy the Kid). A powerful meeting of minds is achieved with the pianist Byron Janis in the standard-setting Rachmaninoff Third Piano Concerto, with the violinist Henryk Szernyg in Brahms and the cellist János Starker in Dvořák. \u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs David Patmore reveals in his new essay for the collection, illuminating the background to Doráti’s relationships with both Mercury and with the LSO, the Mercury team wanted to make ‘event’ recordings of a new and unrivalled immediacy. Unique to this new collection is the first official release of Dvořák’s Carnaval Overture.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Antal Doráti","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51154156454172,"sku":"4847015","price":219.99,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0874\/0513\/4108\/files\/Antal-Dorati-in-London_Volume1-Box-Set.png?v=1740357785"},{"product_id":"rafael-fruhbeck-de-burgos-the-decca-legacy-11cd","title":"Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos - The Decca Legacy (11CD Box Set)","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis box brings together a collection of Decca recordings displaying the dynamism of Spanish conductor Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, including material previously unreleased on CD.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the generation after Ataúlfo Argenta, Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos became the most prominent Spanish conductor, both at home and abroad. Just 25 when he was appointed Music Director of the Orquesta Nacional de Espana in 1962, he trained it into a formidably adaptable and accomplished ensemble. Through the 1960s, he became known to international audiences not least thanks to the Decca recordings compiled complete for the first time in this set.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOf German parentage, but growing up in Burgos, Frühbeck de Burgos had an innate sympathy with both musical traditions of his heritage, and Decca played to this strength. His Schumann (Rhenish Symphony) is impulsive and virile, his Mendelssohn (Midsummer Night’s Dream) is springy and sparkling with detail. His label debut came in February 1965, as accompanist with the London Symphony Orchestra to the Romanian violinist Ion Voicu in a beautifully moulded version of the classic Mendelssohn\/Bruch coupling on LP.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrühbeck de Burgos also knew how to draw out an authentically vivid Spanish colour-palette from foreign orchestras. His 1966 version of Falla’s El amor brujo (the mezzo soprano Nati Mistral) still enjoys classic status. In 1967, he recorded his own picturesque orchestration of the Suite Española by Albeniz, long-unavailable on CD. Likewise, his collaborations with Narciso Yepes present a compelling spectrum of lesser-known guitar concertos when compiled together, from the elegantly neo-classical Concertino of Salvador Bacarisse to the more adventurous set of Tres Graficos by Maurice Ohana, which Frühbeck de Burgos recorded in his sole album for Deutsche Grammophon. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe pianist Alicia de Larrocha also found in Frühbeck a congenial recording partner, who had a naturally idiomatic grasp of the concertos written for her by the likes of Montsalvatge and Surinach. Though she made several versions of Falla’s Noches en los Jardines de España, her 1983 Decca recording with Frühbeck is particularly atmospheric thanks to the conductor’s grasp of the moods and feelings behind the notes. This digital-era album became his last Decca recording, included in this Original Jackets box, which includes a new essay by Peter Quantrill on the conductor’s life and career.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51649713799452,"sku":"4844628","price":71.97,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0874\/0513\/4108\/files\/Product-Images-copy-2_Rafael-compressed-1024x1024.jpg?v=1744303360"},{"product_id":"walter-weller-the-decca-legacy-20-cd-box-set","title":"Walter Weller – The Decca Legacy (20CD Box Set)","description":"\u003cp\u003eA violinist-conductor who understood orchestras from the inside out: commanding power and Viennese warmth in the complete Decca symphonic recordings of Walter Weller. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs the youngest ever leader of the Vienna Philharmonic, Walter Weller quickly established a natural rapport with orchestras at home and abroad when he swapped bow for baton in the late 1960s. Engaged as a regular conductor by the Vienna State Opera, he made his debut as a conductor in the studio with a 1970 recital of arias with the Spanish soprano Pilar Lorengar. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs leader of the Weller Quartet, he was no stranger to Decca’s studios, but he disbanded the quartet to focus on conducting. In Geneva with the Suisse Romande orchestra, then in London with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and London Symphony Orchestra, he brought his insider’s knowledge of orchestral technique to bear on mostly Russian symphonies through the course of the 1970s. Critics identified Weller’s total grasp of complex scores and his ability to get a rich yet transparent sound from his orchestras. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe First and Ninth symphonies of Shostakovich in 1971 were followed up by equally acclaimed complete cycles of Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev. In 1974, Weller also made a compelling account of the Symphony by Paul Dukas, in this underrated work’s first recording on a major label. Decca’s full-frequency sound complemented the burnished gleam of string timbre which Weller elicited wherever he went. He proved a sympathetic and alert accompanist to Pascal Rogé in a 1974-76 cycle of the Bartók piano concertos, and then drew on his own Czech heritage for a broad and loving traversal of Smetana’s Ma vlást with the Israel Philharmonic.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNear the close of his relationship with Decca (1979-82), Weller then returned to the repertoire he had grown up with as the son of a Vienna Philharmonic violinist, recording the Hungarian Dances of Brahms and the violin concertos of Mozart with the Japanese soloist Mayumi Fujikawa. This set stood out from the competition by including the two concertos published under Mozart’s name after his death, later deemed spurious, but highly attractive in their own right. Accompanying this Original Jackets collection, Peter Quantrill contributes a new essay on Walter Weller’s life and career, paying tribute to a true son of Vienna.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Walter Weller","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51649715634460,"sku":"4843410","price":179.95,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0874\/0513\/4108\/files\/4843410_WalterWeller_TheDeccaLegacy_ExpldPackshot_95d7e148-3e0b-46b7-893c-7e4a8b559664.jpg?v=1744303374"}],"url":"https:\/\/shop.umusic.com.au\/collections\/classics-direct-box-sets.oembed","provider":"uMusic Shop Australia","version":"1.0","type":"link"}