Cheap Famous Mahler & Bruckner Symphonies (Music) (Mack Harrell, Anton Bruckner, Gustav Mahler, Recorded Sound, Spoken Word, Richard Wagner, Bruno Walter, Martha Lipton, Mildred Miller, Columbia Symphony Orchestra) Price

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Customer Reviews of Famous Mahler & Bruckner Symphonies

A must for Bruno Walter fans!
Sony's "Original jacket edition" of Bruno Walter's recordings of Mahler, Bruckner and Wagner is a must for his fans. Walter (1876-1962) recorded many works in stereo for Columbia records in the 1957-61 time frame, some of which are included here: Mahler Symphonies 1, 2, 9; Bruckner Symphonies 4, 7, 9; Mahler's song cycle "Das lied von der erde" ; and Wagner Overtures and Preludes, Siegfried Idyll, and rehearsal of Siegfried Idyll. Walter conducts the New York Philharmonic in Mahler 2, Das Lied...; and the Columbia Symphony (Los Angeles, California) in Mahler 1 and 9; the Bruckner items and Wagner Overtures and preludes. Also included in this collection are Walter's earlier New York Philharmonic (mono) recordings of Mahler's Symphony 4 (1945) and Symphony 5 (1947) + lieder with Desi Halban, accompanied by Walter at the piano. <
>This is the only current release of Walter's Wagner Overtures and Preludes, which sound terrific: I bought this for those items alone. <
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>Walter studied with Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) and knew him well from 1894 until Mahler's untimely death in 1911. Walter was age 18-35 at the time, and though not considered the only authoritative voice of interpretation of Mahler's orchestral works by everyone, he knew the Mahler personally, which says ALOT to me! <
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>Sound in all the stereo recordings is excellent, and very good in the mono <
>Mahler 4 and 5. Walter's sense of line and climax are un-erring, and I always feel great after listening to these recordings. They have a "This is the way it should be" feel about them. <
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>The CD jackets are mini reproductions of the original LP covers, and add a nice feel to the collection. There is ALOT of music here for the money, even if buying this means duplicating some of Walter's recordings from his earlier Odyssey and Bruno Walter Edition (Sony Classical) releases. Highly recommended.

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Essential recordings
This somewhat over-priced but essential box contains a collection of Bruno Walter's Columbia recordings of Gustav Mahler's symphonies, nos. 1 (stereo), 2 (stereo), 4 (mono), 5 (mono), 9 (stereo), and Das Lied von der Erde (stereo). In addtion, we find a sample of Walter's Mahler symphony 9 rehearsal, a short Walter-Michaelis discussion on Mahler, and a selection of Mahler's Lieder und Gesänge aus der Jugendzeit (mono) with Walter at the piano, next to Desi Halban. <
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>It collects also Walter's recordings of some of the Bruckner symphonies, nos. 4, 7, 9, and the Te Deum (all in stereo). <
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>Finally, there are also some of Walter's recordings of Wagner music included - some overtures and introductions, the Good Friday Music from Parsifal, and a wonderful Siegfried Idyll (all in stereo). <
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>All this stuff has already been available in separate sets, but some of them are out of print. <
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>There is a much cheaper way to get the Mahler recordings: they have, with the exception of Das Lied von der Erde, been released in a bargain "Columbia Legends" box ($37.99). But the Das Lied von der Erde - the present box include the excellent Columbia stereo version with Haefliger and Miller - is out of print in the US and Europe. It is, however, available in Japan for 1.895 yen, so check amazon.jp if you look for that recording only. <
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>Perhaps not a must for every serious collector, then, considering the high price. But all the recordings are essential, and the use of the original LP-covers is attractive (I have always considered the plastic CD-cases as a complete mistake: they take too much shelf space), even if the box that collects them is one half inch too thick. You get Walter's groundbreaking mono recordings of Mahler's fourth and fifth, in fine transfers and original covers, coupled with his excellent stereo recordings from the early sixties, all of which still must be seen as reference recordings. This holds for the Bruckner recordings as well. This box is presently the easiest and shelf-space saving way to get them all. So I recommend buying it used, at a more reasonable price. <
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Over-priced, under-powered, and incomplete
Sony Music USA must be dedicated to the notion that in a crisis -- and classical CD sales are in a crisis, as their numbers (and the available retail outlets in which to sell them) spiral downward -- one shouldn't just stand there, but DO something. In this instance, with The Original Jackets Collection: Bruno Walter/Famous Mahler and Bruckner Symphonies, they've tried to do something, sort of. But as is usually the case with Sony Music in America, they've done it half-assed. The whole "original jackets" concept seems to be an effort to emulate what several Japanese labels have done with considerable success, reselling long-established classic recordings by artists ranging from Erroll Garner to Elvis Presley in miniature LP sleeve packaging, usually with state-of-the-art digital sound (20 bit/K2 and 24-bit mastering are the twin standards in Japan); Sony-Japan has done it with considerable success on artists such as Miles Davis and Al Kooper. So the US "original jackets" series was co-opting a Japanese success, but not really -- the series is totally inconsistent when it comes to upgrading sound, which is a major part of the allure of the Japanese mini-LPs; the Szell Beethoven entry was upgraded from the previously existing CD issues in the US, for example, but the Bernstein entry uses the same masters that one can get on the existing US CDs; and the same goes for the Walter set. To top it off, Sony-Japan includes a mini-inner sleeve to protect its discs with each mini-LP, whereas Sony's US division apparently likes the idea of discs rolling out of the double-LP mini-jackets and otherwise getting scratched and damaged -- but they still charge a premium price per disc on these releases. <
> And the Walter box, in addition to simply re-packaging the same masters that have been available for a lot less money since 1996, isn't even complete when it comes to the conductor's Mahler recordings for the label -- where is his 1955 mono Mahler Symphony No. 1 with the New York Philharmonic? There are other mono and stereo recordings in here with the Philharmonic as well as the Columbia Symphony Orchestra, and a perfectly good master of the "missing" performance exists, as it was used in the Masterworks Heritage CD release (which also used the mini-LP concept, a little differently) about eight years ago. Additionally, at least one of the performances here, of the Bruckner 9th, has been upgraded in a separate release, using Sony's DSD technology -- why not at least include that, and why not upgrade the entire body of music, if they expect us to buy it anew? That's how it's done in Japan, whence this whole idea originated. In fact, since Sony is bent on trying to sell Super-Audio CD technology, why not bump these up to that technology as hybrid discs? The answer is that they did it on the cheap. It's a handsome looking box, to be sure, and some of the old cover art was worth reviving (and others, such as for the Mahler 5th, much less so), but it's not worth the $150 list price by a long shot, which was why this listener traded for a used copy.