Just bought an 87 CD set of Beethoven's complete works!!!

[AeolianHarp]

I had a lovely Irish ring too, Megan, but I lost it.

Was it an Emerald?

[Chris]

Are the recordings of the folksongs in this 87-CD set the same as the ones from the DG Complete Beethoven Edition?

[Harvey]

Are the recordings of the folksongs in this 87-CD set the same as the ones from the DG Complete Beethoven Edition?

I would suspect not, but you can check the 87 CD set here:
Complete Track Listings

[Michael]

Was it an Emerald?

No. Got it off a chap called Gollum. Cost me an arm and a leg. Literally.

[Michael]

Are the recordings of the folksongs in this 87-CD set the same as the ones from the DG Complete Beethoven Edition?

No, they are completely different recordings. Most of the singers are continental and have a little trouble here and there with the English words. (Not to mention the Irish towns!)
Quite a few of the songs have less verses than the DGG counterparts, but they are fine, lively renditions.

Beethoven's instrumental arrangements, however, are much more audible in the Blue Box set. In the DGG, the voices dominate the background to a certain extent, but in this set I noticed the piano trio was more to the fore and I heard a lot of things I had missed previously.

It is a bit difficult to access the folksongs as they are scattered over many discs and some are mixed with Beethoven's lieder - not necessarily a bad thing because I will admit that 70 odd minutes of folksong arrangements is a bit much (and stop gloating PDG!)

[Michael]

Absolutely! I heard some of the folk songs sung in English on the Beethoven Only Radio the other day and they are wonderful! Think they were the Irish ones.

A lot of Irish songs are included in the British section, and a lot of Scottish songs are mixed up with the Irish. The only lot they didn't mess with (as far as I know) were the Welsh!
(By the way, this is not the fault of the Blue Box; it's the way they were published in Beethoven's time.)






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[Chris]

I have the boxset of the folksongs DG put out that was the same as that included with the Complete Beethoven Edition. They are great recordings, and I was going to recommend this set to interested friends this year with the approach of St. Patrick's day. But it looks like this set is now out of print, sadly. You can at least still buy the mp3s, though.

[Michael]

There are used copies available from Amazon UK starting at around 49 euro but the price goes up steeply after that.

[Harvey]

Someone is selling a single disc from the 87 CD set for 9 cents: Volume 79, which includes The Glorious Moment. I did think the choral part was somewhat muddied, but the soloisits sound fine on this disc, and it is a lot cheaper than the NAXOS release is going for.

Ah, I see many of these singles up on Amazon for 9 cents (plus shipping though) and they have Creatures of Prometheus which I found by searching beethoven complete works, disc 11. That an many others come up, but without the word disc in the search you don't really get these singles to come up.

[AeolianHarp]

No. Got it off a chap called Gollum. Cost me an arm and a leg. Literally.

Precioussssssssss........