Beethoven Symphonies 1-9

Beethoven Symphonies 1-9 box set. Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos conducts the Danish National Symphony in all nine Beethoven symphonies. As bonus extras you also get:

Rodrigo Concierto de Aranjuez
Berlioz Symphonie fantastique
Strauss Eine Alpensinfonie

Featured performers are Albina Shagimuratova (soprano), Charlotte Hellekant (mezzo-soprano), Scott MacAllister (tenor), Johan Reuter (bass), Pepe Romero (guitar), and the Danish National Concert Choir.

Wow! This box will keep you busy for the weekend! And the price is right. Grade: NA

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Here's news about high-definition video disc ("HDVD") recordings of opera, ballet, classical music, plays, fine-art documentaries, and paintings. In the journal below are independent (and hard-to-find critical) reports on hundreds of HDVDs. Pick the best titles for your excelsisphere.

Feb 25. We have just completed one of our most ambitious reviews: Einstein on the Beach opera, the surreal 4 and 1/2 hour cult legend. Kudos, encomiums, and accolades to Opus Arte for giving us this authoritative and weirdly fascinating recording, which we grade A+. Absorbing and learning Einstein is uniquely challenging. We try to help out by providing aids not included in the keepcase materials: an accurate libretto and a list of segments in the opera with correct Opus Arte time stamps. Good luck!

We have some other good grades with an A for the recent Met The Pearl Fishers (Les pêcheurs de perles) and a B- for an earlier The Pearl Fishers from Naples. Also, we recently gave an A- for the new Don Quixote from the Vienna State Ballet.