In the first of these two articles, I talked about the Grieg, Corelli and Haydn Brilliant Classics collections.  In this article, I will present some notes on the Handel, Mozart, and Thomas Tallis collections.  I also neglected to mention in part one that I had also acquired a box set of Telemann pieces, which I will try to include in this discussion.

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I have to admit up front, this wasn’t the best box for me to purchase.  First, Thomas Tallis wrote mostly vocal works which is definitely not up my alley.  Second, the works are religious in nature.  For someone that is a pretty hard core atheist, listening to a lot of religious works isn’t necessarily all that appealing.  And, third, there was my personal mistake: I thought Tallis was a Baroque period composer.

All of those things being said, the works on these recordings are good.  I tried to work my way through the eight CD’s of vocal works, but I wasn’t able to listen to them all — however, I was able to sample each of them.  I did listen to the two CD’s of Instrumental Music and Songs, and found them to be engaging.

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The four CD set of Tafelmusik and Musique De Table is an enjoyable listen, if not exactly the most demanding music.  The Six Paris Quartets were a curiosity for me: I wanted to hear something that predated Haydn’s string quartets.

Telemann was definitely a prodigy, self taught on several instruments at an early age, and writing an Opera at the age of 12.  He nearly gave up on music because of pressure his mother received from several people in the town where he grew up. Fortunately for the world, this was to change after meeting Handel.

The Tafelmusik is probably the best known piece by Telemann.  However, it is rare to hear all three “productions” of the piece.  For this alone, the Brilliant Classics box set is to be recommended.  But, it’s also recommendable for an extremely fine performance by Musica Amphion.  They manage to capture the variation between the movements of the piece beautifully, and impart the manner in which Telemann, always the musical fashionable person, composed the pieces.

When I purchased the Six Paris Quartets, I thought these were going to be similar to Haydn or Mozart string quartets.  And, while they are chamber pieces, they definitely are different in terms of their instrumentation than the string quartets I am familiar with.  These pieces typically use a continuo accompaniment along with varying lead instruments (such as a flute).  Still, these are lovely pieces, and quite high examples of the Baroque style.  The performances by Sonnerie are wornderfully mannered, and exemplify the style of the time period.

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Handel is quite well known for Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks, along with the Messiah oratorio.  Trevor Pinnock and The English Concert as possibly some of the foremost interpreters of Baroque period pieces.  The Orchestral Works recording doesn’t let the listener down.  Starting with excellent interpretations of Water Music and Music for the Royal Fireworks and adding the Opus 3 and 6 Concerti Grossi, and the Concerto Grosso in C major.  I was familiar with some of the Concerti Grossi from other sources, but the inclusion of the complete sets in this excellent interpretation has expanded my appreciation of the form significantly.

I can honestly say that I am not a major fan of the Baroque period keyboard works.  They seem to be overly ornamented pieces that attempt to distract from the main work with their flourishes.  I’ve personally become quite a bit more enamored of Bach’s keyboard works (like The Well Tempered Clavier).  The performances by Michael Borgstede on Suites De Pieces Pour Le Clavecin might well serve to change my opinion of other Baroque period keyboard works.  These are well performed on instruments that are appropriate to the compositions, and make a more solid argument for them than other recordings I have listened to.  But, only time and multiple listenings will tell for certain.

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Obviously with a box set as large as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Complete Works I could not have possibly listened to the whole thing.  In fact, I can say that I’ve barely dipped my pinky into the collection.  I am relatively familiar with the Symphonies from the cycle I have by Christopher Hogwood and The Academy of Ancient Music.  Comparison between the recordings would take some time make. However, I did feel that it And, I don’t have all that much of a taste for vocal works and Opera’s. So, I purchesed this set mostly for the chamber pieces.  I have listened to some of the string quartets and other works, and have found them to be quite enjoyable.

Would I personally recommend purchasing such a large set of Mozart works?  Probably not, unless either (a) you are someone that has an extreme love of everything Mozart, or (b) you want to have another complete set of Mozart recordings to use as the basis for comparison to other recordings.  The only other argument I can make for this set is the price.  As with the Haydn set, the value that you get for the price of the set is quite wonderful.

Conclusion

So, that’s it.  I’m definitely not through all of these works at this point.  I thnk it would have been literally impossible to listen to everything that I have purchased thus far.  However, I have made it a priority to listen to several portions of these collections, and have several other portions on my list to work my way through.

And there is a footnote to this piece…  Just after finishing writing this story, I found that set of Handel’s works has been delivered to my front door.  Of course, this will allow me to delve back into the realm Handel again, and see if I can find some more appreciation for his works.  Although, I may save this for a while as a good portion of this work is vocal and opera.

In this first of two articles I will talk about the Grieg, Corelli and Haydn Brilliant Classics collections.

While Edvard Grieg is most known for “In The Hall of the Mountain King,” “Morning Mood” (both from Peer Gynt) his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, I find his piano miniatures (the Norwegian Melodies and Lyric Pieces) to be wonderful listening.  In fact, I found myself enjoying his works so much that I acquired a fourteen CD set of all of his piano works, and a six CD set of symphonic works several years ago.

[amazonshowcase_f50405eb22e4dfe3ea89e9c008044674]While some of the Symphonic pieces included vocals (especially Peer Gynt), I had not listened to much in the line of vocal works by Grieg.  The fact is, I typically am not a big fan of vocal pieces.  This is because I have been exposed to a lot of choral works (Masses, Oratorios, etc.) and Opera, which I mostly don’t care for. But, would I have this same reaction of seven CD’s of Songs and Lieder by Edvard Grieg?

The answer is a resounding: no.  While I admittedly struggled a bit with working my way through all seven CD’s (that’s the most classical vocal music I’ve listened to in years — with the notable exception mentioned below in the Haydn Edition section), I found that I was able to do it by taking breaks occasionally of anywhere from an hour to a day. And now, having made my way through these discs once, I will likely find myself listening to them more frequently along with other portions of my Grieg collection.

You may be asking: Why?  What is so appealing about Grieg’s vocal music when I haven’t had a preference for vocal music by other composers?  There are several reasons:

1. Grieg wrote his vocal music specifically for his wife.  A lot of the love and passion Grieg had for his wife comes out in this music even over a hundred years after Grieg’s death.  This is also a testament to the interpretations on these recordings.
2. On the whole these pieces are not overly ornate and mannered as other Lieder I have listened to.  The only pieces that I felt were a bit too ornate were the “Seven Children’s Songs” Op. 61.  I think this reaction here is to remembering what I thought music should be like when I was in grade school, and I couldn’t see myself thinking in terms of the songs on in this Opus.
3. Grieg is at his most masterful in lyrical, miniature pieces.  In fact, the more melodic the pieces, the better. This is attested to by his “Norwegian Melodies” and “Lyric Pieces” for piano.

I am now looking forward to trying another experiment: intermixing Grieg’s piano works with the lieder and songs.  With the commonality of themes in Grieg’s music, there should be several interesting ways to go about arranging the works in a playlist.  However, I need to find some time to work on doing this.  I also need, at some point, to gather a set of English translations for the texts of these works.  Someday I may find the time to do these experiments.

[amazonshowcase_0944cdaedd32621d1884e5749a4acc44] Until recently, I thought the really large Brilliant Classics box sets were something that were best left in the store.  I thought they were the equivalent of the High Definition Classics box sets (reviewed here and here), just on steroids.  After doing some research I found out that Brilliant builds their boxes by leasing recordings from other very fine labels (like the now defunct Nimbus label), compiling them into collections, and supplementing gaps with their own recordings.  This made their collections much more interesting to me.

Josef Haydn is possibly the least acknowledged master of classical music there is.  The influence Haydn had on the Symphonic and String Quartet forms alone should be enough to earn him a place above the status of Mozart or Beethoven, and only rivaled by Bach.  At least that is my opinion.  However, it doesn’t seem that this is how Haydn is viewed.  (For example: Phil G. Goulding’s book Classical Music places Haydn in the 5th slot, putting even Wagner above Haydn.  An opinion I cannot agree with.)

Given my regard for Haydn, you might have thought that I would already have some extensive collections of Haydn pieces in my collection.  You would be right: I have two complete sets of the Symphones and String Quartets,  a one complete set of the Masses, Oratorios and Choral works, Concertos and Piano Sonatas.  So, why would Brilliant’s Haydn Edition be appealing to me?

First: there were two things in the collection that I did not have in my collection: the Baryton Trios and the Scottish and Welsh song settings.  Just these two parts of the collection make up over 40 CD’s of the 150 disc set, or almost a third of the collection.  The acquisition of these two items would have cost more than one third of the price of the box set.

Second: in addition, the String Quartets and Symphonies are performed on period instruments in this collection.  The sets of these pieces that I have in my collection thus far are on modern instruments.  I like having a set of recordings on period instruments alongside recordings on modern instruments when I have the opportunity.

Third: included in the box set are quite a few pieces that I didn’t previously have in my collection.  These are pieces and arrangments that tend to be more difficult to find in compilations or on standalone CDs.

Thus it made sense to add this box set to my collection as it represented a great value for the included material at the price, and filled in a couple of larger and smaller gaps in the recordings that I do own.

As with my reservations about the Grieg Lieder and Songs, I had my reservations about the Scottish and Welsh song settings by Haydn.  Unlike the Grieg Lieder, however, I still have my reservations about the Haydn songs.  Why?  First, they are more ornate than I personally like to hear in vocal music.  Second, they are settings of folk songs in a style that I don’t think they are particularly well suited for.  However, that’s just my first impression after listening to about 6-10 discs worth of the songs.  However, I didn’t find them to be so bad that I won’t listen to them again and see if my opinion either changes or is refined with multiple listenings.

On the other hand, I have listened to all the Baryton Trios.  I have to admit, these are definitely lesser Haydn pieces, having been specifically written for his patron Prince Esterházy to perform, and as such are geared to the Prince’s skill with the Baryton.  However, if nothing else, the texture of the sound of the Baryton makes the pieces more interesting than say similar String Trios would be.  What would be more interesting to me, however, would be to create a play list of chamber pieces that mixed the Baryton Trios, String Quartets and other Trios.  The lightness and texture of the Baryton pieces might serve as an interesting compliment to some of Papa Haydn’s major works.

[amazonshowcase_1d42dc27d3d498fb23c1deb4ae76db13] Finally, I have the best find and happy accident of my recent purchases: Arcangelo Corelli’s Complete Works.  I say this was a happy accident because I was mistaken about the types of works Corelli wrote, and a best find as Corelli is something of a missing link.

Corelli was an influential teacher, orchestra leader, violinist and composer of instrumental music.  This last item is particularly remarkable in a period where Operas and Choral works were the primary musical styles due to the influence of the Catholic Church in Italy, and especially in Rome, where Corelli lived.  In writing Trios, Concerti Grossi, and other instrumental pieces that were performed inbetween Oratorios, Corelli was a style setter.  The influence of his work his work can be heard through the next generation of composers including: Bach, Haydn, Telemann, Handel, Vivaldi and Couperin.

Based solely on the invention in these works, it is no wonder that Corelli was so influential for so long.  The works are quite remarkable and stunning, even sounding like the belonged to the next generation.  Indeed a remarkable “accidental” find, the Musica Amphion is an extremely talented group of performers, and their interpretations are highly enlightening and wonderful to listen to.   I am certain to return to these recordings and possibly seek out alternative recordings for comparison.

When buying box sets, especially from what appears to be a “budget” line company, it’s frequently difficult to know if you are going to be getting high quality recordings.  While some reviewers have reservations about Brilliant Classics lines of recordings, I can say that for the most part I don’t.  They are not necessarily the most advanced interpretations of the music, and are sometimes uneven in the quality of the engineering of the recordings (a fact that I tend to believe has more to do with the difference in sources for the recordings), however they offer extensive, and wide-ranging exposure to the works by the composer in question.  And, if you really want to dive into a particular composer in-depth, these are a good starting point.