Igor Stravinsky The Complete Columbia Album Collection is an
unprecedented reissue of the complete s of his works
that Igor Stravinsky made for CBS/American Columbia, bringing
together for the very first time on CD all of the mono
"Stravinsky conducts Stravinsky" s issued in the 1940s
and 1950s alongside the more familiar stereo remakes from the
1960s, as well as all the authorized performances that
Stravinsky's assistant Robert Craft conducted for the label in
the composer's presence, after age and infirmity had restricted
his own ability to do so.
As the first composer in history to have conducted or supervised
the of almost his entire oeuvre (much of it more than
once), Stravinsky left the world a unique legacy of which New
York Times music critic Anthony Tommasini wrote in 1999: "In
terms of archival importance, this discography is the greatest
landmark in the history of recorded music from the classical
tradition."
A more comprehensive representation of that discography than any
previous reissue, Sony Classical's new set of 56 CDs plus DVD
itself represents a major landmark in recorded music, containing
no fewer than 23 performances never previously released on CD
plus 17 performances newly mastered from the original analogue
discs and tapes using 24 bit / 96 kHz mastering technology, while
the accompanying DVD, Stravinsky in Hollywood, contains scenes
from several big studio films of the 1940s brought together for
the very first time with the music that Stravinsky wrote for
them.
This historic collection comes with a 264 pages hardcover book
containing a complete work catalogue, a detailed discography and
a wealth of session photos, along with a major new essay by
Stravinsky expert Richard Taruskin, in which he examines how the
composer s lifelong distrust of performers and live performances
drove him to attempt to preserve definitive accounts of all his
works through the more objective medium of s.
Igor Stravinsky - The Complete Columbia Album Collection also
features facsimile LP labels and sleeves, including cover artwork
by Jean Cocteau, the polymathic French writer, artist and
filmmaker who collaborated with Stravinsky on his opera Oedipus
rex, and by Columbia's legendary graphic designer Alex
Steinweiss, the man credited with inventing the modern album
cover.
Each in this exceptional new set of 56 CDs comes from
the best original source. Sony Classical's Igor Stravinsky - The
Complete Columbia Album Collection thus represents a major new
milestone in the discography of the 20th century's greatest
composer.
Highlights include:
The composer's New York Philharmonic versions of major works
including scenes from Petrouchka from 1940 and the premiere
of his recently completed Symphony in Three Movements
from 1946, "which reflects a new-born masterpiece in the heat of
its creation" (Gramophone)
Conducting the RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra, Stravinsky's
landmark versions of Orpheus (1949), Apollo (1950) and the
Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments (1950), with his son
Soulima as soloist
His Cleveland Orchestra complete Pulcinella (1953) and Fairy's
Kiss (1955), and the 1952 of the Symphony in C, which
the New York Times's Tommasini describes as "a bit tauter,
shapelier and more than that from 1962 with the CBC
Symphony Orchestra", though, the critic continues, "the later
version, a drier tarter performance, seems more boldly modern."
The "definitive" (MusicWeb-International) Oedipus Rex that
Stravinsky conducted in Cologne in 1951, with matchless soloists
Peter Pears as Oedipus and Martha Mödl as Jocasta, narrated by
the work's librettist Jean Cocteau
Stravinsky's 1953 Metropolitan Opera complete of The
Rake's Progress
The solo and duo piano works recorded by Charles Rosen