Claudio Abbado – The Complete RCA & Sony Album Collection (Sony 304505) [39-CD set!]
The symphonies of Tchaikovsky, five CDs of Abbado’s electric Mozart, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, a Schumann disc with pianist Murray Perahia, Dvorák’s Eighth Symphony, Rachmaninoff’s Third Concerto with Lazar Berman, music of Richard Strauss recorded New Year’s Eve in 1992. The Guardian said, “This comprehensive collection, which ranges historically from Bach (the Brandenburg Concertos with the La Scala Orchestra) to Wolfgang Rihm (his Hölderlin-Fragmente), contains some wonderful, cherishable things… Two discs of Mussorgsky's orchestral pieces and operatic fragments, most of them little known, are a reminder of what a tireless Mussorgsky champion Abbado was… The Schumann Scenes from Faust, with Terfel as Faust, is as good as any performance on disc, while two of the themed discs (one built around the Prometheus legend, including Scriabin's Poem of Fire with Argerich as soloist…and another with Mahler's Kindertotenlieder, seem to me to epitomize Abbado's greatness, the imagination and intellectual curiosity that combined with his supreme gifts as a musician."