Restorations from the past

After that rather yukky week we resume going backwards a bit really to something that tended to be on the turntable whenever I was off school which was quite a bit.

Back then we had a wooden rack on wheels on which the stereo unit tended to live with its turntable and cassette deck and a section on the bottom left left that functioned as a record storage rack area although there was a supplementary one in the dining room.

First move after getting some breakfast was to pull two or three records out to play between anything on the radio of interest such as an hour vintage chart show or a lunchtime classical concert and a favourite was Dvorak's Ninth Symphony.

For me Rafael Kubelik's 1973 recording with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra was the finest ever and I was not alone in that, many still consider it so not that there are some excellent also runs with its iconic picture of the New York skyline with the sadly missed Twin Towers with conductor walking.

That record went several years back with compact discs coming in and having suffered a bit a wear and tear in over thirty years but a week ago it returned.

It was reissued in a special series of remastered and recut for higher fidelity records and now sounds better than ever so I've been playing that this week.
 

jjj

The Skater's Waltz

 Some aspects of your life are influenced by your disabilities and how they run across your childhood and for me using a wheelchair some of the time did influence those things you remember and wheelchair dancing was one thing I did every week 

That could factor into other things such as school plays and performances for Christmas's of which apart from the difficulties of learning your lines when you're dyslexic  but I had to dance in my wheelchair to Waldtuefel's Skater's Waltz during it in front of everyone which was nerve-wracking  but fun.

There are of course many recordings of that work but this was the one I had and still have bought as kid used but in lovely condition that has many of his waltzes played by a shorter selection from the Philharmonia Orchestra in the mid 1950's originally issued in mono only and this stereo edition dates from April 1965.

The playing fully realizes the sweeping movement leaving one in awe.

Early English chamber music

 We're giving politics a break this week, like you I've had my fill this week, for a bit of light relief.

Chamber music is something that has always interested me and I have a number of recordings by this group of musicians.

Rachel Podger and Brecon Baroque shed light on this underappreciated era on The Muses Restor'd, a journey of captivating violin-led chamber music from Jacobean to Early Georgian England, ranging from the gentle intimacy of consort idioms to the full-blown instrumental virtuosity of the evolving baroque period.

In this recording Rachel and Brecon Baroque performs works by Handel, Lawes, Blow, Locke, Purcell, Schop, Jenkins, Baltzar and Jones.

This beautifully refined and intimately chiselled chamber music celebrates a rich tradition where the violin joins a plethora of keyboards, lutes, viol and continuo cello reinstating these sonatas, fantasies, suites, grounds and popular tunes to the mainstream of English cultural life of the time. Together with four musicians of Brecon Baroque, Rachel Podger 

A Super Audio cd round up.

 I haven't done many classic music super audio cd round ups as the numbers of titles issued of interest every quarter is small as only a handful of labels issue recordings and some of those that do like Chandos don't issue every title in that form although they play on both regular and Super audio cd players.

This cd in their Nielsen cycle, Edward Gardner and the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra are joined by the flautist Adam Walker in a program that combines the Flute Concerto, the Third Symphony, and the tone poem Pan and Syrinx. 

It was an Easter present.

Work began on the Third Symphony in 1910, some seven years after he had completed his second symphony 'The Four Temperaments', and the work was premiered in Copenhagen in 1912. In his album note, Paul Griffiths describes the work's eventual title, 'Sinfonia espansiva' as a fifth temperament - Joviality. In the second movement, uniquely in his symphonic output, Nielsen calls for (wordless) voices - solo soprano and baritone. 

This was also the first of his symphonies to be commercially released on record.

Composed in 1926, the Flute Concerto is a late work, and demonstrates Nielsen's stylistic evolution towards the new modernism. 

The soloist engages in repeated interactions with other instruments within the orchestra, most notably the clarinet and the bass trombone. Pan and Syrinx dates from 1918, and is based on the ancient legend which tells how the amorous god Pan invented the pan flute whilst pursuing the nymph Syrinx

This is a most useful addition to my small amount of Nielsen works on super audio cd.

This interesting compilation of less popular items by Tchaikovsky performed by the BBC Scottish Orchestra conducted by Alpesh Chauhan came out in 2023 which is useful although I have a good number of discs of Tchaikovsky's orchestral compositions. 

Mozart and his Requiem: a new recording

This week we going back to music I know, the first cd of this work I bought was way back in 1991 during the Two hundredth anniversary of one Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's  death in 1791 as part of a special budget price collection.

Time moves on, those recordings from the 1960's and 70's featured full orchestras and modern instruments that were unknown of in Mozart's own day so many have attempted to strip his music back to that with period instruments and so-called (and still controversial in some circles) Historically Informed Performance techniques.

Mozart's KV 626 Requiem was the last work he wrote and was not complete at the time of death and questions around how much of it really is Mozart's vision or how much is more completed in the style of have always been around not that as a music lover I get too hung up such things.

To me the question is more how satisfying the work turns out however it completed and in the case of a piece such as a requiem what it says to us as human beings about the nature of how we mark the death loved ones and those emotions.

If, like me you were brought up with catholicism, Roman Catholic or Anglo-Catholic via the Anglican Church much of this resonates most strongly.

For this performance Jordi Savall conducts Le Concert des Nations with La Capalle Nacional de Catalunya, keeping much of the richness in bringing to life the impassioned fervour of the Roman Catholic Faith and the hope of divine mercy for our sins that runs through the setting of the requiem sung in Latin with just twenty choristers.

It's not envisioned in this interpretation about clear outlines of the score with the work that was necessary that one may dissect and examine with an analytical mind when it come to the scoring, it is above all a felt experience.

And it works well.

Technically this cd by AltaVox of France is a Super Audio cd with a layer for regular cd players.

Advent Catgut music

 

Funny start to the month with rather cool days and even the expectatation more in eastern England of snow showers and very low temperatures so it doesn't really feel like one season or another.

It's never the best time of year for me - too many traumatic personal memories - so don't be surprised if I go from various sites unexpectedly as stuff just comes over me in waves I'm afraid.

 While with the postal dispute still raging deliveries have been somewhat erratic, thinking at one point earlier in the week I may need to chase up a record, this interesting cd of violin solos played by the renowned violinist Rachel Podger came  out last month.

Personally I quite enjoy violin based music and am a sucker for a compilation of short works including transcriptions from organ or piano.

This which is a Super Audio cd with a regular layer is just fantastic to listen to.

Old masters

 

As I type this just a bit before bedtime here it is expected to fall to below one degree C having spent part of the day putting away the physical trappings of Christmas such as the decorations and tree for another year.

The magic that we invoke by our ritual served us well providing a focus on what really mattered avoiding the deafening noise from other things this last year settling in to enjoy the New Year listening to this years New Years Day concert from Vienna.

While in many ways I like to buy new recordings often more generous when it comes to couplings and frequently on the higher quality super audio cd format, the allure of the past can cut in.

Take this 1976 recording originally made in SQ Quadrophonic sound for EMI/Angel during a period the celebrated Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan was under contract to EMI Records.

It's hardly generous at just under forty four minutes  being a straight issue of that lp with nothing added outside of an excellent remastering done in 2017 that improves on the 1990  Angel original cd transfer.

The thing that makes it worth while actually is the playing not just of the orchestra in Richard Strauss's work but that of the soloists Rostropovich on cello and Koch on voila being one of the finest ever recordings of this work.

It really holds your attention until the very end.

The return of music

 

The London Symphony Orchestra are based these days at the Barbican, London, and own their own record label, LSO Live that features recordings by them and various guest as well as principal conductors.

I was looking for a decent disc of the opera, Fidelio and picked up there's that was on discount which includes the libretto which given this is sung in German, helps with following it although that makes for a bulky package.

On Friday July 30th  the Henry Wood Promenade concerts began generally held at the Royal Albert Hall, London  broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 and streamed with some also being recorded for showing on BBC television at weekends.

After last year where we had a Proms season, reduced from what was planned and heavily socially distanced, at least in 2021 we can have a audience albeit one subject to a few measures watching and applauding at the end the artists after a year when like everything else  that did still continue live, we had one.

It felt more like watching a recording studio control booth from a far, lacking that element of the audience and players feeding off each other.

There are no words at can describe adequately just how elated some of us feel to have live music making back.

The pandemic effected recording not just in  terms of the ability of the superstars of the Classical world to fly in to recording sessions around the globe but also spacing where unlike some popular recording was possible by having people fly in their performances electrically, to do so in classical music removes much of the atmosphere and acoustic feel of a session which effected new releases on disc and download.

Before leaving the station edition

A day before I am off for a few days at Littles Camp, this post has been prepared a bit quicker than usual to facilitate getting my things together, booking a cab to the rail station and so on

Although there won't be any formal classes they'll be opportunities to sit at desks working on things although the likelihood of a finger wagging like that, common enough when I was in school is somewhat remote.
The main thing to remember travelling will be to keep my phone on as it wasn't a part of my experiences growing up and even now it's not quite second nature.
This week I have been listening to the proms concerts on the radio such as the one on Saturday with the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra playing Dvorak's Violin Concerto and Smetana's Ma Vlast (My Country) which is a cycle of six symphonic poems that was a part of what was creation of a wholly Czeck arts culture as much from before was part Germanic the nation was absorbed into others.
That was a thing of my childhood too although I often listened with headphones to reduce background noise and also avoid making a din to others in the dorm having a classical record collection too.
See you next week.

Proms 2019

Today sees the resumption of the BBC promenade concerts in person and live on radio, television and online for this one hundred and twenty-fifth season where mainly classical and a small amount of popular music music will performed by various orchestras, conductors and soloists.

For me it's a season where for most nights there will be music on, some I am familiar with - you don't really want to see my cd collection!- and some not that you just take in with thousands of others and explore.
It also is a continuation rather like most things of a childhood ritual where even as a nine year old, I'd listen to the odd prom by myself and indeed my 'transistor radio' spent almost as much time tuned to 247 metres (the then home of Radio One) as 464 metres (the then home of Radio Three the arts and classical music station) as a junior school child and where possible by the time I was at high school I was even tape recording whole concerts on reels of tape.
This Friday we'll hear the Czech composer Janacek's Glogolitic Mass, Dvorak's The Golden Spinning Wheel and the newly commissioned by the BBC  Long Is the Journey – Short Is the Memory by Zosha Di Castri that marks the 50th anniversary this week of the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon.

R.I.P Andre Previn

On February 28 2019, we lost the German-American, conductor, composer and pianist André Previn who had started out writing scores for movies by the likes of MGM before moving in to Jazz and then classical playing and conducting.

André was in many respects an important popularizer of Classical music in an era where opportunities to hear such music were limited to rather stuffy concerts where conductors and players alike dressed more like they were at a funeral than having fun playing music for people.

In Great Britain, there were in the 1970's two shows that broke the mode, one being the BBC Radio 2 series A Hundred Best Tunes, that played popular extracts from classical music that lead to compilation records and tapes being issued to tie in with it.
BBC Television secured from 1971 through 1979 a coup in having Andre present a show live on tv where he and the London Symphony Orchestra would play whole short works in front of an audience in a less formal way that proved extremely popular.
It was an era where even one serving British  Prime Minister, Edward Heath was actually a classical conductor.
That show resulted in a few selections being issued with an eye toward the shows audience the most obvious being this, Andre Previn's Music night that was issued in SQ Quadraphonic sound on record and tape.

 Of his many achievements as a conductor, his 1970's set of the complete Tchaikovsky Ballet scores for Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and the Nutcracker recording in stereo and SQ Quad remain my personal favourites having then in a six cd set with their light airy touch.
He also famously took part in the Christmas 1971 Morecambe and Wise tv show playing as the straight conductor to Eric Morecambe attempting to play Greig's Piano Concerto on piano, something that showed his sense of humour.
R.I.P André.

Classical update III - Beethoven

Here we are into a new year and yes I'm writing a review as I mentioned on our last edition I had  some cds over Christmas and we'd be talking about them.
Beethoven is the second largest composer in order of works I have collected after Mozart and most of the original discs stemmed from around 1989 through 1994 starting initially with a couple of Naxos titles and later on taking in discs on Deutsche Grammophon that had stood the test of time in the Galleria and Privilege series.
I had replaced a few of those in 2010 for newly remastered versions that apart from sounding firmer being slim 2 cd sets, took less space too.
The last entry for Beethoven was in 2011 when we bought a five cd box set of symphonies.
The violin is an instrument I have a liking for and Beethoven wrote quite a bit for it.

I also like the piano so when the two instruments are played as a duo then I'm enraptured and that lead to getting a recording of Beethoven's Fifth and Ninth Violin Sonatas but the sound was lacking something. Yehudi Menuhin is one of the finest violinists of all time and recordings by him certainly are worth seeking out.

It also was the case I longed for a complete set of them and these two double cd sets give me that in performances that are hard to beat and indeed in his piano works many of us feel Wilhelm Kempff just got the right feel showing sensitivity, restraint and even soul in how on recordings such as this whole set, allowing them to speak directly to us.
The nineteen-seventy analogue sound has been carefully mastered so it sounds as fresh as many modern recordings.
Having got these that had been issued in a four cd set in the halycon days of cd in the mid nineteen eighties I feel upgrading and the same time completing this series of recordings makes sense. 

Classical update II

Today's entry may be the last of this series this side of the new year where I look at old but new to me additions to my classical music collection

Bach was mentioned in late September 2008 on That Boarding School Girl during the period I established a modest selection of his more important compositions and replacing one cd whose conducting lead the playing  seeming more suited to F1 than sedate chamber music!
I am very fond of the Cello as an instrument and so had been looking at getting a recording of his Six Cello Suites when I spotted this which originally came out as three lps and cds in 1985 and to which this is the latest edition with two very well filled cds taking in all three discs worth which came out in 2015.
Maisky's performances have real character holding your attention.
It is interesting to note that would set you back around GBP £40 new in 1985/6 and I managed to get this two cd edition for exactly GBP £4.16 new including delivery!

There was a point in the late 1980's when I had on lp Rachmaninov's most popular Third Piano Concerto but in the intervening period that had left my collection so I had been thinking about picking up a set of his symphonies and piano concertos when I spotted this 'like new'  for GBP £9.99 which works out £1.99 per disc which takes Lorin Maazel's well regarded and performed 1980's account of the symphonies and the 70's Thomas Vásáry's account of piano concertos recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra  conducted by Yuri Ahronovitch across five discs.
He was the last leading Romantic classical composer of the Twentieth century, born in Russia of a military family moving after the October Revolution of 1917 to Switzerland and by W.W.2 to the U.S.A.
Like most two cd versions one of symphonies is split between the discs - here it is symphony No. 1 but the piano concertos are not.
For me this is ideal as a starter set as all the recording have been freshly mastered for the best possible sound and comes with background notes all in a small box.

Past links:
Bach

Copland redux

For as long as I recall classical music played a major part in my life from handed down records, broadcasts listened to an concerts attended that over the decades has lead to collection of favourites by various composers.
Parts of this have been mentioned on That Boarding School Girl over the years as I moved from buying performances on lp records and cassettes to now standard Compact Disc and High Definition download
Chunks of my collection are in one respect time periods where I picked what I could as my interests were piqued remaining without being reassessed in the light of newer recordings and improved mastering of older ones.
Aaron Copland is one of America's greatest composers, period, someone who had the art of getting a lot in without losing touch with American home spun idioms and relative simplicity.
It was around Nineteen-Ninety that got to hear across a weekday broadcasting slot the majority of his compositions in an excellent BBC Radio Three "This Mornings Composer" series of programs much of which served as my 'template' for collecting recordings of them around that era.
The mainstays in that era were Copland's own recordings for Columbia (now Sony Classical) records that in 1991 were compiled into three cd box sets.
I bought two at the time as they had the bulk of the works I wanted even if the early sixties sound left a little to be desired but that other set sounded poor so I never got it or its content

Following getting the Super Audio Player (see the middle/littles blog) I started this process of reassessment as its reproduction of regular cds  exceeded my previous players looking replacing by better sounding and sometimes played versions of which last months Mozart entry was one example.
There precious few recordings of Copland's Clarinet concerto or of Dance Panels and I had formed the view for my purposes, the two Sony Classical boxes I bought in the early nineteen-nineties would benefit from being replaced and this would be a good start point adding two works and replacing my original of 1925's "Music for the Theatre"

Leonard Slatkin is one the best leading conductors and advocates of Copland's music and he recorded for RCA a series of works featuring the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra well compiled of which this adds the not often heard Organ Symphony with Simon Preston and two other symphonies in modern wide ranging digital sound.

Copland mastered the art of writing film music that both didn't get in the way of the screen action and equally wasn't just soundtrack fodder, capable of being appreciated in its own right.
This disc featured the Red Pony, Music for Movies a arrangement of film music in the forms of a suite, Our Town and seldom recorded Prairie Journal (Music for Radio)which was broadcast on the radio.

This disc featured his Third Symphony and Music for a Great City which benefits from a modern recording.

Naxos had an excellent series of discs covering American Composers and I own most of the Samuel Barber titles but this one appealed as these main two works were in the third box I never bought although I've always loved The Tender Land suite written around life on a Southern Farm during the nineteen-thirties, his Piano Concerto and two collections of American Songs originally intended for piano and voice but transcribed here for orchestra and chorus.
I just love singing along to "I Bought Me a Cat".

Mozart Masterworks 1991 revisited

Last time we had a "syncro-post" on this blog which I hope you all enjoyed but today's post will be the complimentary post for a post on the other blog looking at classical music which was something I did blog a bit about on That Boarding School Girl because it was a childhood and school centred experience that included a woodwind group and lessons in music appreciation.
In 1991, to mark the 200th anniversary of the death of Mozart, the record label Deutsche  Grammophon at the time one of the leading labels issuing classical music, instituted a 25 compact disc series entitled Mozart Masterpieces that picked what they regarded as the most essential Mozart compositions in performances they regarded as being desirable all in what was a budget price which from recollection was around £5.49 per disc available separately or as a complete set. 
When compact discs first came out typically we paid £12.99 or more  and by around 1987 mid price discs often more generous when it came to content when it came to classical ones came out around the £7.50-7.99 mark so to have all these recordings at a low unit price really was a bargain for someone who only had a few recordings and many of them on tape or record.

There were however a few for various reasons I didn't get such as the recording of Symphonies 40 and 41 by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Claudio Abbado that it was generally scarcely skated the surface of what was in the score to which I bought the mid 60's recordings by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra  conducted by Karl Bohm instead and there was this one that I had the 1976 Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra recording by Karl Bohm I bought in July 1987 when it came out on the new Deutsche Grammophon "Galleria" series  with the Posthorn Serenade.
I thought it was time to revisit this series that was the core of Mozart collection and track down a copy for the 1960's recordings the Berlin Philharmonic did of this and two other works under the larger than life conductor Herbert von Karajan.
That copy of Bohm's conducting Symphony No.31,40  and 41 on DG "Privelige" was the first I replaced.

Part of the reason was I added the nineties DG "Galleria" of symphonies 25, 29 and 31 was to expand the range of symphony recordings  which did bring about duplication with symphony 31  and this double cd is not only remastered for better sound but adds symphonies 35, 36, 38 and 39 as the original Mozart Masterpieces cd DG 429 802-2 with symphonies 38 and 39 conducted by Herbert von Karajan had gone missing.

This took in his recordings of the late symphonies in their entirity that many hold to be superior to his nineteen eighties digital remakes with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.

I did buy the Melos performed String Quartets disc but I bought later on a 6 cd set of the main String Quartets performed by the Amadeus Quartet at which point this single disc disappeared for some reason or other so I've picked up a replacement so I can enjoy their account of these two works.

This disc played by Pollini was in the set I bought as DG 429 812-2 with a rather generic embossed Mozart head on a piano image using the cd stampers of the mid to late 1980's cd issue but was re-remastered in 2011 in DG's "The Originals" series.
The remaster has given it a smoother less harsh sound that also feels more full and spacious than the original so has replaced it.
As well, it restores the original 1976 lp front cover which is much more attractive as art to look at featuring conductor,pianist and orchestra. 

Also included in the series was Géza Anda's recordings of his Piano Concertos 19 and 26 which for some reason I never bought although I did get a different recording of no 27 than the one in  this cd set which were from a complete series of them that currently are in a 8 cd set that I hope to get at some point being one the finest ever issued.
While the cover on my copy has the label "Privilege" not "Resonance" in the same font) it is from the very same stamper used for it so it is technically identical.

This was the 8 cd set that eventually I bought remastered compared with the early single cd for more firmer sound. It's just a pity copies of the original lp front covers were not included in the booklet.
This series was the first one I followed rather had bought for me, providing an opportunity to replace a number of works I had on much played records and tapes, making available what had in some instances been full price discs cheaply such as the Berlin Philharmonic, Anne-Sophie Mutter recordings of the 3rd and 5th violin  concertos and the first time some recordings previously issued on tape and lp record came out on cd.
Revisiting it, playing some of the original purchases and these others I missed  brings back many happy memories that lead to the establishment of considerable collection of favourite works by many composers on compact disc and its higher quality form, the super audio cd.

As well I did get a complete set of recording of Mozart's violin sonatas that originally came out as separate cds at this time cheaply comprising of excellent all digital recordings to go alongside the collection.

Schubert dip

One thing I do a lot of especially if I haven't been good is play a lot of music as it is routed in childhood and has a very soothing regressive quality with me   and I have been playing these two sets a lot over this period I haven't been too good in myself.

Originally I had  a set of cds on Naxos bought bought several years back this classic set of performances.

Karl Bohm bring so much more out from the score it's unbelievable.

The Melos's performances are much better than the original cds I had and this set is more complete for good measure.
When I look at recordings what I look at is something that will hold up for several years rather than some new revolutionary account whose approach loses favour and the Melos I find is timeless.
I hadn't mentioned them here before and I thought this is a good opportunity to bring my entries up to date.

A touch of the Finns

Yeah I know it's late and that but I've been busy doing stuff not least connected with Project X so sorry an' all.
As most know I've always like the Finnish composer Sibelius and indeed as early as 1993 bought a complete box set of his symphonies but while that box was pretty good it was a bit uneven so I'm prepared to try another complete cycle.

Originating in the 1980's and being mainly digitally recorded Ashkenazy's set for London (UK: Decca) was always highly regarded not just for sound but for the evenness of performances bettering in that regard Simon Rattle's set for EMI which I first bought, bringing more a feel of romance rather than icy cold Scandinavian winters to the score.
It also scores (gawd awful Caroline punnery,eh?) by having the four main Tone Poems and the Violin Concerto included with what is a set you get four around £14 included in this 5 cd set making a excellent introduction to this man I got from All Your Music.
That was less than half the price I paid for my original 4 cd set!

It's a bright May afternoon

I had a totally different idea for this entry yesterday but my ISP for the 700th time went down for several hours so I thought better of it. As soon as BT Fibre up this area I'll switch to them even if it needs a wifi add on for this PC  and some work in the hallway to fit the gear. I've had enough of my current provider. (rant)
I think I last mentioned Boccherini late in 2006 in connection with his Cello Concertos but recently I picked up this set of two cds of his String Quartets which Naxos put out in 2002.

I love chamber music but Boccherini tends to be somewhat neglected when it comes to commercial recordings so it's a delight to have these performances  which are excellent at budget price so well recorded. 

As well I picked up a copy of the 1997 budget 'Duo' reissue of the classic 1967 Opus 12 Symphonies cycle originally issue as three lp box set by Raymond Leppard and the New Philharmonia Orchestra now slotted in two gorgeously filled cds very well digitally re-mastered.

I've also been walking rather a lot  not just cos the weather's been better but also I felt a bit stiff getting into a vicious circle of to hard to move so don't move, so even harder to move.

I'm purposely not setting targets, creating schedules or anything that may make it seem like a chore or worse still, remind of you school PT instructors barking instead I'm incorporating walks into everyday activities by extend the stroll to the corner store or just taking off any old how  for a mile or two whenever  I get a 'wanna be outside running around' feeling.

So far in I've lost five pounds without making any diet changes and more importantly can do a mile without feeling tired. That's some achievement 

Classical additions

It's a very long time ago actually it would of been in my late teens actually that I first heard anything by Bruckner as his music wasn't what I'd call programmed at school in the way that say Dvorak was.
I bought a few lps on the old Vox/Turnabout label that Decca distributed at the time but when in the late 80's I was moving after a period mixing tape with lps to cd exclusively this discs left my house.
I had been on the look out for an affordable set of his symphonies for some time and following some discussion on a forum, I thought I'd look this set up.
Recorded around the late 1970's/Early 80's for RCA this set met the bill with very few reservations by music critics to each performance by the Koln National Radio Orchestra in Germany by Wand who is one the best interpreters of Bruckner ever.
The discs and there are 9 come in card sleeves but unfortunately no notes so you'll have pull a book of the shelf or visit Wikipedia for some ideas about what was written when encased in a cardboard box which has the disc breakdown on the reverse.
Having played a few I feel this is a great starter set allowing you to hear without too much idiosyncratic ways what Bruckner could hear and is very well recorded with realistic acoustics.

Beethoven: Symphonies

Collecting classical recordings often seems daunting with many hundreds of recordings being issued over the decades and made available in differing forms. Beethoven was an early passion of mine from hearing many of his works on the radio or through borrowed discs.
To me at least there is a difference between seeking out outstanding versions of individual symphonies and finding a set to live with, and while there are undoubtedly performances of single symphonies available which could compete with the best, it is as a coherent and aesthetically consistent survey that Cluytens accounts - available in this set - are best considered .
I feel there is a rightness to his judgement which proves enormously satisfying on repeated listenings and there is a special interest in hearing the fruits of a combination of several stellar talents: the virile, robust sound of the pre-Karajan Berlin Philharmonic, the production genius of Walter Legge working in a congenial recording acoustic, the Romantic but never indulgent interpretations of am under-rated conductor who died all too soon, and the especially fine vocal contributions from an unusual team of soloists and the wholly committed choir of St Hedwig's Cathedral - wrapped up in a set available cheaply from the likes of Amazon.

In my teens I became acquainted with Beethoven's symphonies through these performances when they were available as budget LP's on the EMI Classics for Pleasure label collecting the complete set and was worried that many years later my judgement would be clouded by sentimental attachment, however having listened intently to a good many other versions, I find that this set stands up remarkably well. The Pastoral (my favourite of the lot) and the Ninth have long been praised but you will find equally enthusiastic endorsements of every symphony here in one review or you'll be hard pressed to find a discouraging word. They are not the last word in individuality, nor do they bear the stamp of a particular approach, but Cluytens seems to understand and appreciate the spirit and heart of this music. Absolutely no-one captures the cat-like tread of the opening of the Fourth the way Cluytens does; rhythms and accents are beautifully sprung and he pays close attention to dynamics. I was also especially pleased to discover that Nicolai Gedda, was much more impressive than I remembered him in the Choral, and the soaring refulgence of Gre Brouwenstijn's soprano is a special treat.
Herbert von Karajans recordings with the Berlin Philharmonic are often interesting but to me he's never conducted an even as set as this Cluytens set with the same orchestra.

The remastered stereo sound is warm and spacious preserving a sense of being present at the session; excellent for recordings made between 1957 and 1959.