A Complete History of the 'Complete Edition'

The Deutsche Grammophon label has just announced the release of two new "Complete Editions": one featuring all the works of Robert Schumann and one with the complete works of Gustav Mahler.

Schumann: The Masterworks consists of 35 CDs including the piano works, choral music and the quasi-operatic "Scenes from Goethe's Faust" comes out this week. Gustav Mahler: The Complete Edition arrives on June 22. It compiles great DG and Decca recordings of the symphonies by a starry galaxy of conductors, including Claudio Abbado, Herbert von Karajan, and Leonard Bernstein along with pieces like Das Klagende Lied and Das Lied von der Erde.


Complete Editions are boxed sets of CDs, featuring all of the works by one composer, gathered into a large budget-priced box. Most often, the sets come with the CDs packaged in simple paper sleeves. There is usually a small booklet, although some labels save printing costs by making the booklet into a CD file and putting it on a CD-Rom.

The now-defunct Philips label put out the first "complete edition" when they repackaged a lot of old recordings and some new ones as the Complete Mozart Edition to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the composer's birth. This consisted of 180 discs packaged in boxed sets, starting with the symphonies and ending with Die Zauberflöte. The total cost was about $3,000. Luckily, the sets were available seperately, and "mid-priced" at about $11 a CD.

Eventually, the set was reissued again, costing about $1,000, but also available seperately. The clunky, brittle jewel boxes were replaced by 16 cardboard cases and paper sleeves But with the absorption of the Philips catalogue into Decca/London as part of the Universal Music Group, the Mozart Edition sets are again out of print. In 1999, Teldec (now Warner Classics) released the Bach 2000 Edition. (153 discs, 12 box sets.) DG answered with a suitcase-sized Complete Beethoven Edition. Both of these are also out of print.


In recent years, Brilliant Classics have put out Complete Editions of Bach, Beethoven and Mozart, featuring recordings by more obscure ensembles, along with reissues of out-of-print recordings from the Berlin, Decca, and Telarc catalogues. Priced at a dirt-cheap rate (the $145 Mozart Edition consists of 170 CDs--less than a dollar a disc!), these sets are about the size of a loaf of bread. These exhaustive surveys are a cornucopia for music lovers as well as those scholarly types who write long articles about record company reissues for classical music blogs.

Last year, DG got on the bandwagon (again) with their Brahms Edition, which was 46 discs, a veritable cosmic cube of music. They've also put out an excellent Chopin Complete Edition. With the release of the Mahler and Schumann sets, it can only be hoped that the reissues and repackaging of these excellent classical catalogues will continue in the current decade.

Tales from the CD Changer

Disc One:
Mussorgsky, Pictures at an Exhibition, (orch. Ravel)
(Berlin Philharmonic, cond. Igor Markevitch)
This is a 1958 DG stereo recording, reissued as part of the Yellow Label's commendable effort to bring its classic older recordings before the listening public. Markevitch directs the Berliners in an expressive reading of Pictures, infused with characteristic Russian timbre. Highlights include the woodwind playing on The Old Castle and a slow, heavy Bydlo with its famous tuba solo. Three nice Rimsky-Korsakov overtures (recorded with the Lamoreux Concert Association Orchestra) balance out the disc. (Note to readers--this recording is NOT included on the Markevitch box set which I wrote about last week.)


Disc Two:
Ralph Kirkpatrick: The Complete 1950s Bach Recordings. Ralph Kirkpatrick, Harpsichord
Among the best available sets of Bach keyboard music is this 8-disc extravaganza on DG Arkiv, part of that company's line of Original Masters box sets. Here, American harpsichordist, musicologist and Bach expert Ralph Kirkpatrick tackles the English Suites, the French Suites, the Goldbergs, the Partitas, and others. This is pretty much the whole literature of Bach keyboard works, except for the two books of the Well-Tempered Clavier. Happily, those are also available as two-disc sets of DG Originals, and are an essential companion to this excellent compilation.


Disc Three:
Bach: Ein Musikalisches Opfer, Musica Antiqua Köln, (cond. Reinhard Goebel)
The Musical Offering is somewhat under-recorded compared to other Bach works. Here, it receives a pretty definitive performance from Reinhard Goebel and his reliable Musica Antiqua Köln ensemble. Bach composed this work as a set of harmonic and contrapuntal variations on a theme given to him by Prussian emperor Frederick The Great. It is in the form of series of fugues and musical movements that explore every possible variation on the Emperor's original theme. The composition also has a series of musical riddles written into the score. Goebel and company give a crisp, cleanly played account on this excellent disc.



Disc Four:
Villa-Lobos: Bachianas Brasileiras (cond. the composer)
There aren't nearly enough Villa-Lobos recordings in the catalogue, but this one featuring four of his nine Bachianas Brasileiras is one to keep. The Brasileiras are works in which the Brazilian composer attempted (with varying success) to establish a correlation between the contrapuntal textures of Bach and the rhythmic complexities of Brazilian music. These mono recordings from the 1950s feature Villa-Lobos himself on the podium conducting Brasileiras Nos. , 2, 5 and 9, with mega-soprano Victora de los Angeles guesting on the famous No. 5. Nos. 1 and 5 feature superb cello playing, with featured soloist Fernand Benedetti, and the orchestral virtuosity in No. 2 is well worth hearing.


Disc Five:
Vaughan Williams: Lark Ascending: The Soft Sounds of Vaughan Williams (Various artists)
Great things sometimes come in really stupid packaging. That's the case with this superb Vaughan Williams sampler from Decca. It has all three of Barry Wordsworth's essential RVW recordings with the New Queen's Hall Orchestra: the titular Lark Ascending, (featuring violinist Hagain Shaham) the Fantasia on Greensleeves, and the best recording ever made of the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. Fans of the latter work (and there are a lot of you out there, you know who you are) will probably have this in their collection already. Those who don't know the piece need to start here in exploring the vast output of this brilliant British composer.