Two New Complete Beethoven Editions

[Michael]

There is a brand new Complete Beethoven Edition out on CD and possibly another one due in September. The Cascade Edition contains 87 discs -exactly the same as the D.G.G. edition – and it mostly follows the layout of that edition, i.e. Symphonies, Concertos, Stage Works etc. However, this is a completely new set, with new performers, conductors, etc. The last couple of discs would seem to contain a lot of
borderline works that are off the main catalogue: Hess, Biamonti, etc.
It is described as the "first comprehensive edition" which is hardly true.

You can see it here:
http://www.cascade-medien.com/Beetho...te_Edition.pdf

Furthermore, there is a rumour that Brilliant CD’s (nothing to do with Ira Brilliant) are bringing out a complete disc set later this year. They have done this with other composers such as Bach and Mozart.
I haven’t studied the Cascade list very much yet so I don’t know what the new set will cost, but it should be much cheaper than the DGG because of the packaging. However, it doesn’t boast the “starry” names that feature in the DGG.

Michael

STOP PRESS: It seems to be available here for fifty euro!!!!!
Postage to Europe eight euro. 87 discs for about forty pounds sterling.

http://www.mail-order-kaiser.de/appE...NUM_DAO=635597

[Rutradelusasa]

Lol! Symp. n1 is played by none other than Eugen Duvier, a conductor as real as Alfred Shold, Alberto Lizzio, Henry Adolph and others (Anton Nanut, however, is real and does pull something good on ocasion).

[Michael]

Yes, but some of the sonatas are played by Richter and Buchbinder as well as Jene Jando. The string quartets are handled by the Kodaly who recorded the acclaimed Haydn set for Naxos. Yehudi Menuhin and Barry Wordsworth are some of the names that crop up in the PDF catalogue.
For the price of three full-price CD's, so much is available that cannot be found elsewhere: the canons, the part-songs, the vast amount of folk-song arrangements, about ten CD's worth of non-sonata piano music, even the fugues written for Haydn, for God's sake!
These last items and a good number of minor piano works which are listed in the Hess catalogue were omitted from the DGG edition for which I paid the equivalent of 750 euro exactly ten years ago!
I'm sure most of us have the big works for which we need the best performances we can get, but as I said before, this set also contains the vast amount of minor works which would be very capably performed by artists from the Naxos label etc.
There is another set due out in September by Brilliant (not Ira!) and a price of 99 euro has been suggested. Beyond the fact that it is a French edition, I can find no more information.

Michael

[rjbca]

Speaking of Buchbinder, his complete set of sonatas was ignored by Gramophone, and saw no reviews in North America (perhaps because they were released by the German label Telefunken, now Teldec), but they remain for me the standard that no one else has come close to matching.

He also has released a box of other piano solo works, a great deal of which provides unexpected pleasure to the Beethoven enthusiast.