Charles Munch - Complete Warner Recordings

These 13CDs, containing Munch’s entire Warner Classics catalogue, comprise recordings made between i) 1935 and 1949 (CD7-13) and ii) 1965 and 1968 ((the year of the conductor’s death, CD1-6). The repertoire on the 13 CDs is wide-ranging – from the Baroque era to the mid-20th century (Bach and Vivaldi to Dutilleux and Jolivet) and from core repertoire to rarities. The 78 rpm era recordings find here their first original complete edition and they include numerous official premieres on CD. Roussel’s Suite in F recoreded for Erato is released here for the first time on CD. The Berlioz Symphonie fantastique with the Orchestre de Paris was recorded a few days before the first concert of the orchestra: the first notes ever played by the Orchestre de Paris. Jean-Charles Hoffelé, in his note for the boxset, sums up Munch’s style thus: “… his frenetic rhythms, his enormously varied palette of intense colours … his unerring feeling for a crescendo, all the subtle accents and phrasing that make his performances speak directly to the audience, and above all an irrepressible sense of movement …”

Price: $51.98