Holst Boult

A luxurious and authoritative 64CD orchestral and concerto set, celebrating one of the world’s great orchestras and their 64-year relationship with Decca Classics. Few labels can claim to be so associated with a city as inextricably as Decca is with Vienna. No history of classical recordings would be complete without a chapter documenting how both Decca and the WP worked to perfect the art of recording in the city’s great concert halls, most notably in the famous Sofiensaal.

To be sure, there are some great performances in this 10-disc set, André Previn: The Great Recordings. Previn's insouciant wit is evident in his effervescent reading of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, and there is deep affection in his sensuous account of highlights from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet. His explosive rendering of Orff's Carmina Burana has barbaric splendor, and there is thrilling excitement in his orgasmic interpretation of Rachmaninov's Second Symphony. But it can't be denied that Previn's superficial readings of Holst's The Planets and Debussy's Images are little more than musical travelogs, and that his dreary accounts of Shostakovich's Eighth and Elgar's Enigma Variations are musty musical picture galleries. His extravagantly colorful renderings of Messiaen's Turangalîla Symphony and Walton's Belshazzar's Feast come across as lurid musical history lessons.