Mozart Edition - complete this time.

[Bryn]

(Suggestion - Display on a pedestal)

Amazon needs to improve its customer experience in these deliveries - the option to deliver in boxes marked "Screwfix" or "XXXX Garden supplies..." (weedkiller?). The box could then be whisked straight into the shed as a staging post...

Indeed, simply adding the customer's address information to the DGG/DECCA packaging which comes replete with a label identifying the contents, is not exactly discrete.

[Retune]

Sadly this is the issue for those of us who use computers to store our recordings. I have standardised on the format 'Violin Sonata No.32 in B flat major K.454' but every new recording is subject to the vagaries of the internet databases. I use Musichi to edit the data, it's very flexible and has a classical database.

Interesting. I've never gone beyond Freedb and Gracenote for tagging, and of course that's pretty hit and miss for classical music, especially for large multi-disc sets that are often not consistently tagged. It's a shame this edition is not available as an 'AutoRip' like the Richter, Pires and Argerich boxes I've bought over the last year or so were - ripping 200 CDs is going to be a marathon task. I wonder if we'll ever see anything quite like this again? There have already been complete Bach editions sold on USB sticks and even pre-loaded onto iPods. I suspect the inevitable Beethoven 200 in a decade or so may not be released on CD.

Just lugged the beast back home with the aid of an Ikea bag from the local B&Q, which turns out to be the nearest 'Doddle' pickup location, a service I've never used before. Amazon seems to have a bewildering variety of places to dump parcels nowadays; Doddle handles bigger boxes than the others. Fetching something from B&Q is probably useful cover if you need to smuggle your purchases past Management!

[Dave2002]

Looks like the party is over, at least for now. Cheapest 3rd party trader on Amazon is currently £258, and Amazon itself is only selling it via the other more expensive listing (£345). I hesitated at the weekend (there's something a bit crazy about buying a 10kg box of 200 CDs in 2016 when the music would fit on a micro SD card!) but eventually went for it, and now it's on the way.

Sounds as though I missed out, so hope a good deal appears in the future. I wasn't going to bother, but the recent Record Review has swung my opinion somewhat. There sounded to be some lovely performances in the box, and maybe I don't have so many of them already. Definitely a possible now.

[mikealdren]

Interesting. I've never gone beyond Freedb and Gracenote for tagging, and of course that's pretty hit and miss for classical music, especially for large multi-disc sets that are often not consistently tagged. It's a shame this edition is not available as an 'AutoRip' like the Richter, Pires and Argerich boxes I've bought over the last year or so were - ripping 200 CDs is going to be a marathon task. I wonder if we'll ever see anything quite like this again?!

Try Musichi, it allows you to tag composer, composition and movement as well as all the soloists and also add your own tags. It's editing facilities are excellent although you do have to get used to how it works. Once stored, you can play directly from the catalogue which you can search by any tag, I tend to list mine by Composer, Artist, Instrument (grouping say Violin items together) and composition.

In the attached example, I have selected Mozart and the Violin Sonata K454. I can then select the lot or drag and drop any movements to the playlist. It can also output a playlist to Foobar.

Obviously loading lots of recordings take ages but it was great fun rediscovering long forgotten discs and it's fabulous for comparative listening.

Mike

Mike

[Contrafactum]

I opened mozart.225.com and clicked on ‘Listen’. Then I saved the CD Titles page to my desktop as ‘Mozart225 Tracklist’. I can now ‘use :Edit - Find and type my query into the search window at top right. For example, I put in ‘Sonata for violin and piano’ and 24 matches came up for me to scroll through. Hope this is of use to you.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Are they all MAD?
Yes, they are ALL mad.

My parcel of insanity arrived this morning (all this week, there's only been one two-hour period that I haven't been able to make sure I was in to receive it: guess when it was delivered! Bad weather on the hills meant that my neighbour was in to take delivery of the 10kilos ).

It all looks rather wonderful - all the CDs are there, and CDs and sleeves matching up. (And it looks as if someone in the stockroom has checked, too - some thumbprints on the sleeves.) The "booklets" are indeed as generous as Bryn pointed out - AND, joy of joys, the number of literal CD duplication with what I already own comes to - Three discs (Tony's Horn Concertos with Hogwood; Marriner's Marches, and the Grumiaux Trio Eb Divertimento! The Colin Davis Cosi which I had somehow expected to be in the set isn't. One very happy chappy here at ferney house, today - several years of delight ahead of me.


(And I agree that the packaging is pretty damn fine, too - and it takes up less space length-wise than I'd set aside for it, too. The jade-coloured box coincidentally matches the colour of the cupboard doors in my kitchen - an oversight of Universal not to make it a lighter green shade to go with the decor of the actual room the box is going to be kept in! )

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

[Cockney Sparrow]

The Mozart packaging and its quality somehow reminded me of the DG Bach vinyl sets of the 70s (I only bought some of those box sets.)

To be precise, the thought I then had was "I wonder if they will do this with JS Bach (Hurford, Gardiner et al) and if so, how many CDs would that be?".

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The Mozart packaging and its quality somehow reminded me of the DG Bach vinyl sets of the 70s (I only bought some of those box sets.)
To be precise, the thought I then had was "I wonder if they will do this with JS Bach (Hurford, Gardiner et al) and if so, how many CDs would that be?".

They missed the trick in the 325th anniversary back in 2010, so we might have to wait until 2025 for the 275th anniversary of his death. (By which time I might have saved up!) By that time, as others have suggested, the CD itself might well be a thing of the past - so we'll have to wait until 2050, when CDs will be back on sale. I doubt we'll ever get a Bach complete CD box for under £200, though!


Incidentally, my checking of the Mozza CDs took longer than it should have: I was checking that the number of the CD on the sleeve matched that on the disc itself. A couple of times, it dawned on me rather later than I'd've hoped that there were a lot of CDs with the number "225"!

[Bryn]

The Brilliant Classics complete Bach comes in at well under £100 from many suppliers. Now a complete Haydn edition would really be something to reckon with.

[teamsaint]

They missed the trick in the 325th anniversary back in 2010, so we might have to wait until 2025 for the 275th anniversary of his death. (By which time I might have saved up!) By that time, as others have suggested, the CD itself might well be a thing of the past - so we'll have to wait until 2050, when CDs will be back on sale. I doubt we'll ever get a Bach complete CD box for under £200, though!


Incidentally, my checking of the Mozza CDs took longer than it should have: I was checking that the number of the CD on the sleeve matched that on the disc itself. A couple of times, it dawned on me rather later than I'd've hoped that there were a lot of CDs with the number "225"!

Quite a task.
although it would be made worse of course if the CDs have been printed incorrectly........like the Brilliant Classics Messiaen Organ and Piano works 17 CD set.

Trying to remember how I sorted that little lot out.....at least it wasn't 200 CDs.

[MickyD]

The Mozart packaging and its quality somehow reminded me of the DG Bach vinyl sets of the 70s (I only bought some of those box sets.)

To be precise, the thought I then had was "I wonder if they will do this with JS Bach (Hurford, Gardiner et al) and if so, how many CDs would that be?".

I remember those handsome blue and silver Archiv boxes of the Bach Edition - as a teenager I was never able to afford them, but happily a few years later I managed to pick up a luxury book which gathered together all the notes and illustrations from that luxury set.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Talking of packaging, the gold medal must go to the Telfunken Bach Cantata Edition on LP, directed by Harnoncourt and Leonhardt. The 2-LP sets came with the complete scores of each work.

[Bryn]

Talking of packaging, the gold medal must go to the Telfunken Bach Cantata Edition on LP, directed by Harnoncourt and Leonhardt. The 2-LP sets came with the complete scores of each work.

This being the 21st Century, "W. A. Mozart: The New Complete Edition" offers the link www.dme.mozarteum.at

Sung texts and translations are to be found at www.mozart225.com, but you need the 12 character password to access them. It should not be that difficult to guess.

[MickyD]

Talking of packaging, the gold medal must go to the Telfunken Bach Cantata Edition on LP, directed by Harnoncourt and Leonhardt. The 2-LP sets came with the complete scores of each work.

Oh yes, they were very handsome indeed. And the boxes in a sort of dark brown linen, blocked in gold.