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1.Mozart: Gran Partita & Berg: Kammerkonzert by: Mitsuko Uchida, Christian Tetzlaff November 11, 2008
Average Rating: >>More Details		List Price: $16.98 Off The Bookshelf's Price: $14.99 You Save: $1.99 (12%) Prices subject to change. Used Price: $12.70
Previous reviewers have been unnecessarily harsh about this remarkable new release. Part of the appeal here is the prospect of hearing Pierre Boulez in his eighties (but conducting with more vigour than most 20 year olds) working with a group of truly first class musicians. The result is a magnificent combination of Mozart and Berg. As one would expect, these are beautiful but unsentimental performances, exquisitely balanced, full of detail, with plently of rhythmic vigour, The tempi in Mozart's glorious Gran Partita are on the quick side but not exceptionally so. What is most impressive is the sense of structure - Mozart's perfect forms come across with great clarity: the famous Adagio travels its sublime arc in one effortless sweep; the variations are also a model of lucidity ... Read More

2.Varese: Arcana; Ameriques; Ionization; Offrandes; Density 21.5; Octandre; Integrales from: Sony January 14, 1991
Average Rating: >>More Details		Off The Bookshelf's Price: $9.98 Prices subject to change. Used Price: $4.44
I can see that Frank Zappa would have been inspired by this music. As a longtime Zappa fan, I can hear plenty in Zappa's music that was modeled after Varese. Still, Varese's pieces on this CD are hardly monumental or awe-inspiring, and this seems to be the kind of music that very much depends on how it's played and interpreted. You don't get much better than Pierre Boulez; if it was, for example, me conducting an ensemble in performing Varese's work, nobody would listen. So it seems that it's not as much the music as the performance. And that Varese cannot be credited with.

3.Olivier Messiaen by: Loriad, Bon May 27, 2008
Average Rating: >>More Details		List Price: $47.98 Off The Bookshelf's Price: $37.99 You Save: $9.99 (21%) Prices subject to change. Used Price: $32.20
In honor of the 100th year of Olivier Messiaen's birth comes this six-disc set of some of his most groundbreaking and beautiful music. The protean composer was one of the 20th century's major visionaries as well as one of its most accessible artists, a claim few other musicians can make. While his output is immense, this box set functions both as a wonderful entry point for those unfamiliar with his work, and a welcome addition to the most ardent Messian fan's collection. An added bonus is the presence of two of the most gifted interpreters of his music: the virtuoso pianist Yvonne Loriod (Messiaen's widow), and legendary conductor/composer Pierre Boulez. The first two discs are devoted to Messiaen's "The Transfiguration of Christ," a monumental work that expresses his deep religious faith through an astonishing ... Read More

4.Baby Dance:Toddler's Jump on the Classics from: Erato September 06, 1994
Average Rating: >>More Details		Off The Bookshelf's Price: $15.98 Prices subject to change. Used Price: $2.93
I bought this for my 5-year old daughter who loves litening to my classical music. She did not like it. It failed to grab her attention.

5.Alban Berg Collection / Various (Coll) from: Deutsche Grammophon March 09, 2004
Average Rating: >>More Details		List Price: $63.98 Off The Bookshelf's Price: $57.49 You Save: $6.49 (10%) Prices subject to change. Used Price: $39.99
After receiving multiple box sets of the complete works of Webern, I was happy that Alban Berg is finally receiving the same treatment. Although I favor Webern's music over Berg's, he's still one of my favorite composers. I'm not sure why he doesn't receive as much attention as Webern and Schoenberg (with the exception of "Wozzek"), but he doesn't and, until now, collecting his oeuvre has been difficult, to say the least. Now, we have access to everything, with classic performances no less. My main complaint is that the set feels a bit cheap. Where the Deutsche Grammophon Webern box set contains six CDs in slimline jewel cases, and a large, multi-lingual book, the Berg collection contains eight CDs in flimsy cardboard sleeves and includes a much smaller booklet. We can certainly appreciate Berg's operas, "Lulu" ... Read More

6.Schoenberg: Pierrot lunaire - Lied der Waldtaube - Erwartung / Minton, J. Martin, J. Norman, Zukerman, Harrell, Barenboim; Boulez by: Arnold Schoenberg, Ensemble InterContemporain, Pierre Boulez, Jessye Norman, Yvonne Minton, Daniel Barenboim, Lynn Harrell, Michel Debost, Antony Pay, BBC Symphony Orchestra, Janis Martin July 13, 1993
Average Rating: >>More Details		Off The Bookshelf's Price: $9.98 Prices subject to change. Used Price: $3.97
I have a Boulez recording of the Pierrot Lunaire that I recorded on tape from a friend's Lp in 1979. I don't know anything about this lp, except that it is a Boulez's direction, but I think that it is an earlier version of this 1977 recording. The "sprechstimme" is realized better than the De Gaetani recording, obviously better than this '77 Boulez recording (here the reciter sing, and the Pierrot sould absolutely not be sung) and much better than the 1997 recording with Christine Schafer, who sing and often seems, I don't know how to say, almost like a "strangled hen"!... If anybody knows if this recording (my earlier Boulez recording on tape) is available on cd please tell us!!!

7.Berg: Kammerkonzert; Stravinsky: Dumbarton Oaks / Boulez, Barenboim from: Deutsche Grammophon January 23, 1996
Average Rating: >>More Details		Off The Bookshelf's Price: $11.98 Prices subject to change. Used Price: $3.69
This Deutsche Grammophon CD collects some of the first recordings that the Ensemble Intercontemporain put down after its founding in the mid-1970s, linked to the IRCAM music and acoustics research laboratory. Their first director, Pierre Boulez, leads them in pieces by two very different modernists, Alban Berg and Igor Stravinsky. Berg's three-movement "Chamber Concerto" for violin, piano and 13 wind instruments was written between 1923 and 1925 and shows a mastery of the 12-tone method. The first movement begins with a brief little motto incorporating the names of his friends Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and then proceeds through a series of variations. For the most part, this sounds like an especially zany Mahler, and Berg's Viennese heritage is especially evident in the langsamer Walztempo. The second movement is an Adagio, ... Read More

8.Complete Webern by: Anton von Webern, Clemens Hagen, David Finckel, Anton Webern, Pierre Boulez, Ensemble InterContemporain, Mary Ann McCormick, Berliner Philharmoniker, Eric Schneider, Gianluca Cascioli, Krystian Zimerman, Oleg Maisenberg, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Christiane Oelze, Francoise Pollet, Lawrence Dutton, Gidon Kremer, Philip Setzer May 09, 2000
Average Rating: >>More Details		Off The Bookshelf's Price: $71.98 Prices subject to change. Used Price: $56.96
I share the very positive sentiments of the other reviewers. I have heard both of the Boulez anthologies and prefer this one, although the other is excellent too. Compared to the classic Karajan Webern single CD with the same orchestra, which I also admire, the newer Boulez performances of the same pieces are marked by equally fantastic orchestral playing, and even better recording quality, which makes the extreme dynamics of Webern's writing more effective. If there is a better Opus 1 by any composer than Webern's Passacaglia, I would like to hear it. The Schubert and especially Bach arrangements on the first CD are first class. In my view, all the performances are successful - with special kudos to the soprano Christiane Oelze and the Emerson String Quartet. The documentation, in substance and presentation, is excellent too. Personally, ... Read More

9.György Ligeti: Clear or Cloudy from: Deutsche Grammophon November 14, 2006
Average Rating: >>More Details		Off The Bookshelf's Price: $30.98 Prices subject to change. Used Price: $50.68
György Ligeti died in 2006 after a long and productive life as a composer who challenged the creativity of even his most avant-garde colleagues. Teldec produced a magnificent series of CDs, The Ligeti Project, which contain some of the most thrilling performances of the composer's well-known works as well as much of the esoterica: it is big, it is expensive in toto. This 4-disc album, while less inclusive, presents all of the works DGG has recorded and the price is affordable (just over $30) for such a solid survey. The works include pieces for solo instruments (organ, piano), chamber ensembles from quartets to small chamber orchestras, to the works for chorus, instrumental concerti and for large orchestra. The various ensembles - Ensemble InterContemporain, Chamber Orchestra of Europe, London Sinfonietta, Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Choir ... Read More

10.Carter: Oboe Concerto, Esprit Rude - Esprit Doux, a Mirror on Which to Dwell by: Holliger, Cherrier, Trouttet, Bryn-Julson, Boulez, Ensemble Intercontemporain April 14, 2006
Average Rating: >>More Details		Off The Bookshelf's Price: $12.99 Prices subject to change. Used Price: $8.24
This is a superb set of Elliott Carter, with three 1980s compositions, and one from the U.S. bicentennial year of 1976. The earlier version has long been unavailable in the U.S., and this Apex reissue (a WEA bargain line) came out in the U.K. in 2001, but has only popped up on Amazon USA in 2006. The recordings of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, with Pierre Boulez conducting, were made at IRCAM in Paris in December 1987. The same works were performed at an 80th birthday concert for Carter in Paris a year later. The highlight is the "Oboe Concerto" (1986-7), performed by Heinz Holliger. In Carter's words from the liner notes, "(i)t is in one continuous movement with the soloist accompanied in its widely varying, mercurial moods by a percussionist and four violas. The main orchestra opposes their flighty charges with a more regular set ... Read More

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