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Beethoven Complete Works boxed set recommendations

I’ve been thinking of getting one of the Beethoven "complete works" boxed sets currently available. The recent sets I’m aware of are the Naxos, Warner Classics, Brilliant and Deutsche Gramophone ones. If you are aware of any other current Beethoven complete works sets please let me know.. The Deutsche Gramophone set is currently an out of print limited edition, but possibly available second hand.

Which of these sets would you recommend? I am primarily interested in the quality of the performances and quality of the recordings. Some of the sets are more comprehensive than others, and include a greater number of Beethoven’s lesser known works and fragments, but that’s only of secondary interest to me. I’ve read some reviews online of these sets, but am interested in what you think, especially if you've had a chance to listen to or sample any of them. Thanks,

Mike

skyscraper
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jim5559
604 posts
 

Naxos is always good for the money and always has good music..

 

Often someone or group does better than the famous .

Young artists tend to give it it all . I have about a hundred CD’s from Naxos

without one dog .

skyscraper OP
829 posts
 

Noske, I have the Brilliant Mozart and Bach sets and have been pretty pleased with them, I'm not very well versed in Classical music though, so am not a good judge of performance quality. I did read the Brilliant Beethoven set wasn't that good compared to the other two I do have.

Jasonbourne52, Is that 1967 Karajan a complete works set?

Jim, the Naxos set reviews I've read so far concur with your judgement. It's supposed to be a fairly complete set too with lots of odds and ends included.. Since the DG set is harder to find and pricier by far I'm leaning towards the Naxos or Warners.. Hopefully someone out there has the Warner set and can comment. 

Mike 

melm
1,082 posts
 

The two sets I have enjoyed the most recently are Zinman with the Zurich Tonhalle orchestra and the new one by Savall with his hand-picked orchestra.  Terrific sound on both of these.

A classic though is the 1963 Karajan-Berlin set.

Another that many folks like is the SACD Vanska Minnesota Orchestra set.  But I find the BIS dynamics overly aggressive,

newbee
4,767 posts
 

Too many excellent choices (for me at least - I've got/had a lot of them).

In recent years  I found myself listening more often to Bernstein's set on DG than others available, and more recently the set issued set by Blomstedt on Accentus Music. FWIW, the latter gets  good current reviews and IMHO deserves them. Don't mistake them for another set for 'sale' on Amazon if your looking for the latest/greatest performances in a set.

I too will take a pass on Vanska's set (which I also have).

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