Beethoven Complete Works boxed set recommendations

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 

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,

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).

Meim and newbee,, I will try and find some information tonight on the Beethoven sets you both mentioned. and will get back to you here. There appear to be more options than those of which I was aware. Thanks for the suggestions.

Miker

Do you mean 'Complete Beethoven' , as in everything he wrote, or just recordings of the complete symphony cycle?

Cheers