Chandos Percy Grainger edition

[LeMartinPecheur]

For my birthday this year my family very kindly lashed out on the above 19-CD box, but I'm a teenzy-weenzy bit disappointed that it isn't by any means a complete Grainger edition. While there are many works that appear in anything up to 6 different versions (scorings, even complete reharmonisations), there are still some that don't get in at all. Tribute to Foster is one of the larger omissions, and there are a good few titles in the Nimbus complete PG piano edition that don't squeeze into Penelope Thwaites' three solo piano discs either. What happened?

Presumably the money ran out somewhere (was it supported by the PG Society? - I see their main man Barry Peter Ould contributing plenty of new editions and realisations) or did sales figured disappoint? Is there any hope of further issues to fill in the gaps?

I do realise that that very concept of a "complete edition" is rather tricky where PG the inveterate rearranger and fiddler is concerned

[MrGongGong]

Does it have the Kangaroo pouch free music ?

[VodkaDilc]

There was a very comprehensive review in the February 2011 IRR. It sounded very tempting: 19 discs for the price of 4 + a 180-page book! The review seems to suggest that the project to record a complete Grainger Edition is unfinished, so perhaps LeMartinPecheur has something to look forward to!

[LeMartinPecheur]

Does it have the Kangaroo pouch free music ?

Sorry MrGG, there's nothing actually played on any attempted realisation of PG's cutting-edge music machines. The only bit of the Free Music in the box is an authentic PG 'sample'-arrangement for str 4tet, less than two minutes' worth, which I haven't tried yet.

[Serial_Apologist]

Sorry MrGG, there's nothing actually played on any attempted realisation of PG's cutting-edge music machines. The only bit of the Free Music in the box is an authentic PG 'sample'-arrangement for str 4tet, less than two minutes' worth, which I haven't tried yet.

Complete or not quite, I would think this is hard to beat.

(Unlike P. Grainger - allegedly)

[LeMartinPecheur]

There was a very comprehensive review in the February 2011 IRR. It sounded very tempting: 19 discs for the price of 4 + a 180-page book! The review seems to suggest that the project to record a complete Grainger Edition is unfinished, so perhaps LeMartinPecheur has something to look forward to!

The 180-page booklet is a lot better than nothing, but still a long way short of proper documentation. I won't be Oxfamming the single discs I already owned because their notes are much fuller. The box-set contributes one note per title, but rarely deals adequately with the multiple versions, and nowhere clearly explains the provenance of all the new editions and realisations.

The most basic failure is that against the note on each title there is no track-listing of the different versions in the box. So to find the 7 versions of Irish Tune from County Derry, say, you just have to plough through the 400-odd tracks on the 19 discs