The only European Amazon I've ever had consistently ugly experience with is Amazon UK. Then again, it's been a while since I've ordered from the Italian branch, so take that for what it is.
I've ordered 10+ shipments from Amazon.it. None of them had very substantial packing at all; however, only one arrived damaged. They quickly replaced the shipment and told me to throw away the damaged product.
More snippets about the ASMF 60 box, this time from Amazon.com: "60 CDs celebrating 60 years of one of the World's finest chamber orchestras, renowned for fresh, brilliant interpretations of great orchestral music This new Edition, an exciting new collaboration between Decca and the Academy, celebrates the Academy's international reputation for its distinctive, polished and refined sound through a handpicked selection of 60 recordings from their vast catalogue of over 500 Recordings taken from the Decca, Argo and Philips catalogues, plus Sony Classical, Pentatone and Onyx. Including the first and last recordings with Sir Neville Marriner, and recordings with Iona Lewis and with present director Joshua Bell, this edition is a true survey of the first 60 years of the Academy."
I'm very tempted but, as many of you might sympathize with, I really don't know how much of that music included in the box I already have. I have too much music, and I love the ASFM, but I really do believe that a lot of it has been previously released in many of the box sets we all (might) have. Am I wrong? Pity I don't keep an Excel file of the music I already have. My own fault.
I have a simple Access database which contains all my classical music. It's easy to query using parameters of my choice, and I have a couple of predefined views so I can quickly know if I already own a piece of music. Yes, I'm a geek.
I used to have that ... but gave up with 11.000 CDs and close to 14TB of lossless files. Geek? Definitely!
I have another one with just CDs listed. It makes it easy to find arbitrary data, like which band or composer I have the most CDs for.
BIS is issuing a box of JS Bach’s secular cantatas by Bach Collegium Japan with Masaaki Suzuki. It’s 10 SACDs, so maybe not what we would call “mega box” these days, but it makes a companion to the Sacred Cantatas box from a while back. The design appears similar from the cover scan. https://smile.amazon.com/Complete-S...260303&sprefix=suzuki+bach+can,aps,146&sr=8-2
To help you sort this out, in addition to the listing a few pages back (351 to be exact), Amazon.it now has the contents of each CD listed (but not the composer, etc found in the list I drew from Tower Japan). From the latter one can however draw the conclusion that most of the content has been out on CD before, but I believe mainly as individual CDs or possible two or three CDs together. The only slightly bigger box I know of is the Marriner Argo Box, which has very little in common with the present one (about 6 CDs worth out of 60). The new box is really stacked, probably with many 80+ minutes per CD, so while it may have a single original recording (including its cover) as the starting point, most have added recordings by the same composer from different years.
Baremboim Sony a retropective 46 CDs 55 euro Amazon. It https://www.amazon.it/Daniel-Barenboim-Una-Retrospettiva-DVD/dp/B01N7Y8TI5/
I'm torn but I actually don't have a lot of those recordings so I have it ordered still. BTW the ASMF box still has 7.50 euro shipping to the US from Amazon.it -- I would lock it in if you are interested before it gets adjusted. The shipping on Amazon.it for the Beethoven 2020 box finally adjusted from 7.50 EUR to 44.67 EUR (!) on the lowest form (it's even higher on the "Global Priority" options) Seems like some of these sets are marked like individual CD's when they're first listed there, which may be worth remembering for the future (and worth putting in a preorder you can always cancel later)
Thank you for this. The previous BIS SACD box set with the sacred cantatas is one of the jewels of my collection. I don't think I ever heard a Bach recording by Suzuki that I did not like.
Not a new release, nor a "mega" box, but the 20-cd BBC Legends vol 2 set is available for half-price direct from ICA Classics: BBC Legends Volume 2 (20 CDs) – £12.50 for mp3, or £27.50 for the physical product. The list of contents is absolutely mouth-watering. Can't wait for the postman to leave me a card saying there was no-one in when they called, so I need to collect it from the depot.
Thanks. The typical lousy Amazon CD listing for a big box. Who the heck cares about all the andante, allegretto, etc? Just give us the title of each CD in the box. As it is, I still do not know what exactly are in the box ...
‘‘60 CDs celebrating 60 years of one of the World's finest chamber orchestras, renowned for fresh, brilliant interpretations of great orchestral music This new Edition, an exciting new collaboration between Decca and the Academy, celebrates the Academy's international reputation for its distinctive, polished and refined sound through a handpicked selection of 60 recordings from their vast catalogue of over 500 Recordings taken from the Decca, Argo and Philips catalogues, plus Sony Classical, Pentatone and Onyx. Including the first and last recordings with Sir Neville Marriner, and recordings with Iona Lewis and with present director Joshua Bell, this edition is a true survey of the first 60 years of the Academy.”
Was this a typo? I am only aware of the late Iona Brown and attended her concert with the ASMIF at the Carnegie Hall in the early 80's ...
@Åke Bergvall posted the contents of the box in this thread a couple weeks ago: Classical "Mega" CD Box Sets
I doubt I will get the box as I have just about all the best Marriner's Philips recordings on CD and on LP, some Argo LP's and the Marriner Argo Years box. I also have a number of his recordings outside of Philips and Argo. I am more interested in knowing the exact recordings in the box and determine if I want to get the recordings whose singles my collection does not have.
about where I’m at also... I have the Argo box also, plus a bunch of older CDs... sometimes I end up clicking “buy” anyway
