Bruno Walter 77-CD complete edition, Sony

[Lance]

Sunday, the Amazon Prime service delivered a rather heavy double-boxed set of the complete Columbia recordings of Bruno Walter, who can also be heard as a pianist in some cases. The discs include all his monaural recordings (some new to CD) and remastered recordings of the stereo discs.


The coffee-table book was lovingly put-together. All Walter's recordings include those with the New York Philharmonic, the Columbia Symphony Orchestra (Los Angeles musicians largely) and the Philadelphia Orchestra. From the earliest that I can remember, I collected Walter's LPs and then went into the CD reissues more carefully. For long-time collectors, there is some nostalgia in seeing the original jackets (and many cases the jacket liner notes). Where material from, say two 10" or 12" short-play LPs (many originally issued on 78-rpm discs) the actual colour photo of the album is shown in the book (such was the case with Lily Pons's recordings here coupled with those by the Mozart arias rendered by Ezio Pinza.

Many of today's youngest classical music "collectors" hardly know the name Bruno Walter, Monteux, I dare say even Toscanini, and even other "legendary" conductors many of us know well. I guess it's natural that time changes things dramatically in all the arts. Regardless, there is much to value and learn from Bruno Walter's musicianship as a Gustav Mahler disciple. It is good, old-fashioned interpretive musicianship coming from, in many cases, the composers who wrote it or those who studied themselves with composers who wrote the music and translated the message to the new conductors on the scene. The box sets CD contents are conveniently placed with the original ML or MS catalogue numbers, but also defining the new volume numbers on the spines of each heavy cardboard sleeve to keep each item in perfect order.

Walter's collaborators are many and include Francescatti, Fournier, Stern, Lotte Lehmann, Ezio Pinza, Serkin, Milstein, Seefried, Tourel, Pons, Hendl, Steber, Miller, George London, Szigeti, and many others.

These sets are generally going for under $170/USD and no doubt the prices will climb like they did for the remarkable George Szell set. So, if you want to buy yourself a Christmas/Hanukah gift that will make a long-time impression on you, this may be the way to do it! Given this Sony set and any EMI recordings Walter made, of which there are several, one can trace Bruno Walter's art practically from the very beginning to the very end.

[maestrob]

Thanks, Lance, for the recommendation!

Bruno Walter was, in my humble estimation, a mixed bag as a conductor on records (I never heard him live.). He could be inspired in Wagner, Bruckner or Mahler IX & Das Lied von der Erde, or things could go off-track as in his Brahms Symphonies and Mahler II. In any case, this set is a must-have as a document of one of the greatest conductors of the past century!

[barney]

Ooooh, Lance. I'd have been happier not knowing!
Hard to justify the set, given how much I have here I have yet to listen to, and hard to justify not having it. I don't have so much Walter on CD; mostly on LP which I no longer play.
When I went searching last night, I could only find a 39-CD set. You refer to a double box - is it that one plus another?

[Lance]

I'm surprised Australia isn't listing the 77-CD single-boxed set. Is it my understanding you cannot access Amazon/USA in Australia? This one to which I refer is one big, heavy boxed set, probably due to the big book that accompanies the set. The other Walter recordings I referred to appeared on EMI/Warner on their prestigious "Icon" series. There Walter plays the piano in Mozart's Piano Concerto #20 in D Minor. So if you have both, you have the bulk of Walter on disc. I don't believe he commercially recorded for any other labels than Columbia and EMI. He did appear on a number of "live" and/or reissued CDs taken from commercial recordings, such as AS Disc, IDI, Music & Arts, Dutton, Archipel, Legend, Lys, Tahra, VAI, and others. But this new Sony set, especially for the USD price, would almost be a necessary collectors' item much like the Szell.

Ooooh, Lance. I'd have been happier not knowing!
Hard to justify the set, given how much I have here I have yet to listen to, and hard to justify not having it. I don't have so much Walter on CD; mostly on LP which I no longer play.
When I went searching last night, I could only find a 39-CD set. You refer to a double box - is it that one plus another?

[Lance]

I can't recall ever having heard Walter either, though if I did, I would have been very young. So I know his work only through recordings. My first exposure to stereo recordings of Brahms symphonies were the Walter ones with the Columbia Symphony, and I was hooked on the conductor. (And there are individual recordings I might prefer these days). But I know each of us has preferences for recordings which causes us, of course, to have many choices. I absolutely think you will be enamoured with what this set contains.

Thanks, Lance, for the recommendation!

Bruno Walter was, in my humble estimation, a mixed bag as a conductor on records (I never heard him live.). He could be inspired in Wagner, Bruckner or Mahler IX & Das Lied von der Erde, or things could go off-track as in his Brahms Symphonies and Mahler II. In any case, this set is a must-have as a document of one of the greatest conductors of the past century!

[maestrob]

I'm resurrecting this thread o let everyone know that amazon currently has copies of the Bruno Walter Box available for a bit less than I paid in December 2019 ($166). It's now selling for $147, with free prime delivery.

Grab it while you can if you haven't already!

[Lance]

Yes, that's the 77-CD set [92324], which I bought in December 2019 via Amazon Prime for $180/USD including tax. So this new price is a great bargain for anyone interested in historical conductors with a rather huge recorded legacy. Some of these mega-boxed sets go down in price depending on interest, but most of these mega-boxes go up substantially in price as time moves forward. Think Szell, Cziffra, Toscanini, Artur Rubinstein, etc.

I'm resurrecting this thread o let everyone know that amazon currently has copies of the Bruno Walter Box available for a bit less than I paid in December 2019 ($166). It's now selling for $147, with free prime delivery.

Grab it while you can if you haven't already!

[Donald Isler]

Not being a serious collector I'm not going to buy this. But the name Bruno Walter reminds me of a few stories.

1) Dad had an uncle who was not a musician, but loved music, and thought he knew better than other people what was good. The conductor's name was originally Bruno Walter Schlesinger. This uncle told of once when he encountered "old Mr. Schlesinger" (ie, Bruno 's father) at a concert, and gave him suggestions on what his son could do better (!).

2) One of few differences of musical opinion I remember between Dad and Bruce Hungerford was that, while Bruce preferred Beecham for Mozart, Dad preferred Walter.