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Posted by Patrick Waller on January 22, 2007, 5:55 pm, in reply to "My little Bruckner collection" I completely agree with you about Jochum’s EMI set but know little of his DG traversal which has a better reputation. Meanwhile, I wonder if you have heard Barenboim’s Berlin set for Warner which is probably the best value set and costs just £22 from Amazon UK at the moment (see my review of March 2005). It can be sampled cheaply by downloading from the Warner website. Mind out for the dud 2nd (try the 5th say) but the rest is all worth having. What are best individual Bruckner bargains around? Well Sinopoli’s single disc 5th and Karajan’s final 8th (two discs) are both pretty much at the top of the pile and at mid-price. Bruno Walter’s 4th and 9th are excellent at bargain price. Haitink’s VPO Philips Duos of the 3rd/8th and 4th/5th are very fine. Klemperer’s 6th is a mid-price GROC and Tintner on Naxos is as good as almost anyone in the first two symphonies (the main exception is Giulini’s 2nd which is at full-price but worth every penny). For the 7th – Karajan on EMI at mid-price or Tintner at bargain price. I will alert John Quinn to your posting - he is both a Bruckner specialist and a denizen of the bulletin board, and hopefully he will add some thoughts. If you haven’t seen it, John and I wrote an article on the subject in February 2005 and there is an update six months later. Of course life moves on and sometime we ought to update it again. I don't seem to be able to add more than one link to the message (see below) but hopefully the other items mentioned can be easily located using Google on the Current Reviews page.
Link: Bruckner article
195.149.46.220
I used to own Karajan’s DG Bruckner cycle from the 1970s on LP and I have the 4th and 9th from it on CD. If you want a cycle of numbers 1-9 under one conductor this might well the most attractive from an artistic point of view. However, I don’t think the sound is as good as one might have expected – there seems to be an aural haze around the orchestra. At the moment, not only is this expensive but it comes in three double-jewel cases and would occupy a lot of space. My guess is that sooner or later it will be reissued in slimline format more cheaply and perhaps even remastered to advantage.
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