I can’t beat that story but I had the following experience with Walmart online-they we’re selling the Warner Beethoven Complete Works for under 100$ with free shipping-so I bit. Upon opening the box I was greeted with ok but not great packing and as a result two corners had some mild rubbing wear( not crushing). Customer service offered a 50$ refund which was more than fair given the low level of damage. Excellent box set so far by the way-I have been sampling here and there.
PSA: While I agree that individual customer service interactions can be great, there are more than one report of Amazon suddenly cancelling customers' accounts. When this has occurred, that customer generally has had a history of getting credits for damaged shipments or supplier-related issues. I presume there is some sort of algorithm they use to determine whether the business relationship is in their interest to continue. Probably takes a good number of complaints, but I would tread carefully.
I have the Warner Beethoven Complete Works and it is great, indeed! This was offered for $40 for a few hours on Amazon and me and others snagged a copy.
That occurred to me, as well. The stories I hear suggest the cancelations come without warning and seem to be a bit of a shock to the customer (though perhaps they shouldn't). I heard one (just one) similar story about Jpc.de here at this site. As I recall - perhaps inaccurately - the customer acknowledged some returns but asserted he bought enough from Jpc.de that they still made plenty of money from his purchases. I've returned some defective merchandise to Amazon, and the cancelation threshold (whatever it is) invariably crosses my mind. I don't think I'm even close, but I still think about it. Someone told me once that I should buy a particular item from Amazon then - if I didn't like the product or changed my mind about it - just claim it was defective somehow for a free return. As much as Amazon grinds my gears now and then, and as much as I dislike Bezos personally, that I won't do.
I bought my first turntable a couple of years before joining this forum. On the previous hifi forum I was on people said go to this place to discuss the best sounding vinyl; I went through plenty of the phases DH described, ended up buying a lot of music I didn't actually like (classic rock the big lump all genre, though more specifically prog rock), but liked listening to it because it sounded good. Dumped all of that about 5 years ago and have been back with my first love (classical) ever since! Though I discovered your fine avatar around the same time and have always loved his music I'll disagree that a lot of what is coming out now is "second tier". The earlier box sets were indeed from artists that more than likely sold in the hundreds of thousands to millions of records but I do not mark this as a quality of them being in the first tier. As an example I have the Rubinstein box as well and I am eternally grateful they used Ward Marston's transfers for the historical recordings since the transfers sound exceptional. But a huge amount of Rubinstein's output was when he was well on his decline technically, he lost a lot of ability to play pianissimo with subtlety and started to get lumbering and even clangorous in tons of his stereo recordings (and these are the stereo RCA recordings that would have been his big sellers on LP). BIG charismatic personalities like Karajan, Bernstein, that can also sell themselves goes a long way in selling records as well. I am not marking this down as anything against them artistically. So it makes sense for the majors to release box sets for these artists that sold in huge numbers because it will give them the best chance to sell a larger quantity of box sets. Some of the very best interpretations I have heard are from musicians that don't get massive promotion from the major labels or aren't even on major labels. One of the finest pianists I know playing today on BIS personally responds to emails as if he is a good friend. He is absolutely a Horowitz level talent in terms of virtuosity. And I love listening to musicians from the pre-war era for their special interpretations but by today's standards these are average to below average musicians on technical level. Even orchestras like the Singapore Symphony that I saw a few years ago, we expected to just make an entertaining evening out of it; what I came away hearing was probably the equivalent of one of the finest orchestras back in the 1950s when orchestra quality was really spotty; regardless if you were a European or American orchestra. I fully agree with you on the pricing and I sometimes I feel I might have been a bit too vocal about being annoyed with pricing these days and having to buy things quickly after they are released. Where in the past I could take all the time in the world to find a great deal. Also those days of getting Sony mega boxes that would now be ~ $200-250 retail when Amazon would blow them out for $100 and that price would last for at least a couple of weeks before they sold out of their stock. Even Universal I thought these boxes would never go out of print; I lucked out getting the Arrau Philips for 85 Euro, and rode the sharp edge way too close for that one as it disappeared soon afterward. Just a couple of years ago I'd have expected this box to still be around.
Though not as big as rock and roll boots, according to the first book opera boots (though smaller in scope) preceded them. This book plus the second (also showing how classical preceded popular) provide an excellent overview of the unofficial and official recording industry. This book also is recommended, if only for the interesting post-WWII format battle (10" 33-1/3 RPM vs 7" 45 RPM) between Columbia and RCA Victor. Spoiler alert - both win!
Now the JPC site says: Item will be re-manufactured. Expected availability End June 2021 https://www.jpc.de/jpcng/classic/de...-produktion-deutsche-grammophon/hnum/10430869
Apparently Universal has refinanced Harmonia Mundi without taking a stake in the company. It makes one wonder about the viability of the independents under the current conditions. That would impact the variety of the mini-mega sets. Thoughts?
I happily bought this box for 27 euros! Scribendum does not always make boxes that are impeccable from the point of view of sound quality, but this is absolutely not to be missed! The art of Michael Rabin https://www.amazon.it/gp/product/B08PJKJ9N9/
Very interesting information indeed. I´m not surprised that bootleg on opera preceeded the rock or pop music bootleg, given that even music piracy (which is different from bootleg of course, but is also thought to be a modern phenomenon) started much time before the recording industry. On Beethoven time for example, letters indicates that the composers fighted to make the best possible deal with the editor, and in the other directions editors strived to pay less, because both parts knew that any profit coming from the scores would last only for a short period of time, because as soon as the scores of composers like Beethoven was published, the non-official copies started to be done (and sold) by people that had no rights to do so. Thus music piracy comes from a time much earlier than the recording industry, still from the time where music was sold only by means of score copies. No surprise that the bootlegs also started earlier than we thought.
It is really strange because the Gardiner box disappeared from DG Store as well (you can still buy it on Amazons though, but probably they have a few copies in their warehouses). It is as if DG spotted some error and withdrew the box.
I recall that the 1981 French film Diva featured a plot about an obsessed fan making a bootleg copy of a recital by an opera singer who refused to be recorded.
Maybe not, but do I want to rely just on one store that can also pull books from their inventory and even digital reading devices in a heartbeat? Not to mention kill off local stores, middle class operated? Think about it though, you get 120 CDs in the Ormandy box - that's $2 per CD. We are all talking as if inflation isn't a thing. Just today, they announced a year-on-year rate of six (!) percent in the US. While it's only 12 Cent per CD when we're talking about $2, it's $12 for 100 CDs. In one year. Hold your horses. In German and on the JPC website, it says "Nachgefertigt" and not "Neuaufgelegt" - meaning that it's getting some additional pressings/printings. They were probably surprised by their own success. If they had thought it would be so successful, maybe they would have put out a box WITH BETTER DESIGN?
I love that film! Though I haven't seen it for many years. I must track it down on DVD. My French teacher at school (a native of Bordeaux) would discard the grammar and vocabulary books towards the the end of term (semester) -time and show us classic French films like Diva, Jean de Florette, Manon de Sources etc. I remember that Diva featured Catalani's glorious aria "Ebben? Ne andro lontana" from La Wally. It prompted me to go straight to the large HMV record store in Oxford Street London in the following school holidays and buy a compilation CD from EMI called The Movies go to the Opera, which included this and lots of other popular arias used in films.
I hope nothing is wrong with that set. My "results" are: It thus looks like 3, 4, 13, 37 and 38 have been newly mastered/authored for this box set.
Really? No wonder I stopped watching the news two years ago. Is it just me or are these mega-boxes gradually getting larger? $2 per CD is just fine for a 50-CD box, but $500 for a 250 CD box wouldn't seem like an equivalent value.
I did a search here and on google for any reviews on the Seiji Ozawa Complete DG box but couldn’t find anything really. Any words on it?
It depends what you are looking for. Ozawa DG box has lots of Tchaikovsky, Ravel, etc. If you look for more basic Austro-German repertoire, then I'd rather suggest 100 great symphonies box or Kubelik DG box (Beethoven, Mahler, etc.). If you want a bit of everything, then I suggest DG 120 anniversary box or Bernstein Remastered box (I recommended only those boxes which are still in print)
would you recommend the complete Bernstein box or the bernstein remastered box? Is it worth ponying up the money for the complete box? or jusy wait until they do a different complete box? Haha
