As I type, announcements arrive of more repackaged, sometimes remastered classical box sets that are guaranteed to bring joy to music-lovers. Here is a very personal selection of some of the choicest offerings of 2016.
Fritz Wunderlich: Complete Studio Recordings on Deutsche Grammophon (32 CDs). Everything the great tenor recorded for DG, Philips, Decca and Polydor is included in this box. That means six discs of sacred music (the Karajan Beethoven Missa solemnis and Haydn Die Schoepfung amongst them); two discs of opera aria excerpts; complete operas by Berg, Monteverdi, and Mozart, along with highlights from operas by Lortzing, Tchaikovsky, and Verdi; lieder by Schubert, Schumann, and Beethoven; and five discs of popular German song. Why Wunderlich recorded so much before he died 50 years ago is simple: his voice was so wonderful, and his expression so pure, that everyone wanted to hear him again and again.
Dutilleux Orchestral Works: Seattle Symphony, Ludovic Morlot (3 CDs). Herein you will discover an extraordinary musical language whose wondrous colors and attention to timbre confirm Dutilleux as the rightful successor to Debussy and Ravel. Seattle Symphony has risen to international prominence thanks to the efforts of Music Director Ludovic Morlot, who studied with Dutilleux. His recording of the Violin Concerto L'arbre des songes with Augustin Hadelich won a deserved Grammy. Rostropovich, Mutter, Upshaw, and Fleming are some of the artists who were so swayed by Dutilleux's genius that they asked him to compose for them.
Schubert Lieder: Matthias Goerne (12 CDs). All the Schubert recordings the great baritone has made for Harmonia Mundi include his more mature takes on Winterreise, Die schoene Muellerin, and Schwanengesang . An indispensable alternative to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau's interpretations of this repertoire, by someone who studied with him and shares his gift for profundity, but who approaches the songs with a different sensibility.
Music@Menlo Live: Schubert 1-8 (8 CDs). Superb artists, including the Dover and Escher String Quartets; vocalists Joelle Harvey and Nikolay Borchev; and pianists Jeffrey Kahane and Juko Pohjonen perform some of the most beloved chamber music by Schubert and others whose music is related to his. Some of the pairings on this journey are fascinating.
Leontyne Price: Prima Donna Assoluta (22 CDs). Mississippi-born soprano Leontyne Price (b. 1927) made her opera-house debut at San Francisco Opera in 1957 in gay composer Francis Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites . Before that, she performed in a Broadway run of gay composer Virgil Thomson's Four Saints in Three Acts , toured in Gershwin's Porgy & Bess , and was championed by gay composers Samuel Barber and Lou Harrison. In addition to being a member of an oppressed minority with whom many of us had an innate sympathy, she had one of the most sensual, soaring, and dramatic lyric voices of the last 100 years. Now for the first time, you can hear Price in all her glory, surrounded by superb casts, in remastered operas by Verdi, Puccini, Mozart, and Bizet recorded in the prime years of 1962-72. Required listening includes the Carmen with Corelli, the second Aida with Domingo and Bumbry, and the Il trovatore with Domingo and Milnes.
Beethoven: The Symphonies: Herbert von Karajan, Berliner Philharmoniker (Pure Audio Blu-ray). The entire 1963 set, remastered and available on a single Blu-ray disc. We are talking about one of the classic stereo interpretations of all time, set down before period-instrument scholarship and practice-altered tempos.
Elizabeth Schwarzkopf: The Complete Recitals 1952-1974 (31 CDs). Remastered in 24/96, all her recitals for EMI. These include her famed live Wolf recital with Furtwüngler in Salzburg, and the 1967 Homage to Gerald Moore with de los Angeles and Fischer-Dieskau. Partly due to the dominance of her husband, EMI producer Walter Legge, Schwarzkopf became the dominant soprano lieder specialist of the postwar era. The voice is like no other, and the sensitivity to nuance and meaning alternately maddening and breathtaking. The second volume of this set, with remastered versions of Schwarzkopf's earlier commercial material, is just out as well.
Vivarte 60 CD Collection Vol. 2 (60 CDs) The second installment of the complete period instrument recordings on the Sony Vivarte label by Tafelmusik, Huelgas Ensemble, L'Archibudelli, Gustav Leonhardt, the Kuijkens, and Jos van Immerseel. Bach, Brahms, Brumel, Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Schütz, Buxtehude and others in some of the definitive performances of the last 25 years.
Philip Glass & Robert Wilson: Einstein on the Beach (2 DVDs). When this game-changing opera/musical theater work premiered in 1976 at the Avignon Festival, the course of modern music was altered. Here for the first time on DVD is the 2012-14 production co-commissioned by UC Berkeley, with the Philip Glass Ensemble conducted by Michael Riesman, choreography by Lucinda Childs (who played the lead in the original production), and direction/set design by Wilson. Fittingly, the production began its run in Montpellier, France, and was recorded in that country's Theatre du Chatelet in 2014. Grab three bowls of popcorn, a joint, and whatever else you need, and prepare to enter an alternate universe.
Cello Stories: The Cello in the 17th and 18th Centuries (5 CD). As much care seems to have been lavished on this handsome volume as on many of the period-instruments sets from the wonderful Jordi Savall. With text by Marc Vanscheeuwijck, Les Basses Réunies under Bruno Cocset begin with the origins of the cello repertoire, and extend through Bach to Geminiani and Boccherini. A natural for period-instrument aficionados.
Mozart 225 (200 CDs). In honor of the 225th anniversary of Mozart's death at age 35, Decca, Deutsche Grammophon and the Salzburg Mozarteum Foundation have issued a whopping 24 lb. box of recordings and commentary. Only 15,000 copies of this box set, which includes 240 hours of music and two hardbound books, have been issued. Everything Mozart composed, including the Handel and Bach arrangements, over 100 fragments, completions by other composers, works of doubtful attribution, 30 CDs of alternate (historic) performances, and two discs of newly recorded period-instrument interpretations. Wow.