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The 99 Most Essential Schubert Masterpieces (Amazon Exclusive) |  | Artist: Various Artists
Label: X5 Music Group
Category: Digital Music Album
Buy New: $5.99
as of 9/8/2010 10:50 CDT details
Seller: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 496
Genre: classical-music
Media: MP3 Download
Running Time: 49296 Minutes
ASIN: B003O5FC42
Release Date: August 1, 2010
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
Maybe the greatest deal in the history of classical music July 10, 2010
HB (Fort Mill, SC)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
There are so many excellent recordings in this collection, it is almost mind boggling that it costs only 2 dollars. That is 2 cents a track and one of the tracks (Mass No. 2) is over 25 minutes. Some of the highlights are the "Death and the Maiden" quartet, the C-Major Quintet, all of the symphonies and most especially the ultra romantic rendition of Ave Maria, an incredibly beautiful arrangement. If you have any interest in classical music, this set is a must buy. At two dollars, it is almost free.
Get It for the Chamber Music July 7, 2010
March Eliot (Planet Earth)
9 out of 11 found this review helpful
Before you read my review, I hope you read T. Fisher's which is as usual extremely helpful and informative.
I wrote in my review of the Mendelssohn set that the wonderful thing about these collections is chance they offer to explore lesser-known works by major composers, alongside more canonical works. That does not apply as much to this collection, since there are very few "minor" pieces here. With the exception perhaps of the rarely-performed Mass (here on one huge single track!) and one or two other pieces, nearly every track in this collection really is, as the title declares, an "essential masterpiece." This ranks alongside the Brahms, then, as one of the most impressive "99 Essential" collections devoted to a single composer. Better still, many of the performances are first-rate.
The glory of this set: the chamber music! Schubert's chamber music is among the greatest ever composed, and nearly all the major pieces are included here.
The piano trios, the arpeggione sonata, and the "Notturno" piano trio movement, all performed by the Arion Trio; it appears they are taken from this BIS recording which sells used for many times the cost of this entire set! I have had the chance to listen to the first piano trio, the arpeggione sonata and the Notturno, and all three are absolutely splendid performances in wonderfully clear and detailed sound. These performances compare favorably with any I have heard. Bravo!
"Death and the Maiden" is performed by the Tokyo Quartet, from a Vox two-fer I've owned and enjoyed for a long time. It's an exciting, hard-driving performance in good digital sound.
The Rochester Chamber Players deliver an ebullient "Trout," previously collected in 1992 Vox box set. The sound quality here is good, and captures the double-bass especially well, which is vital for this work (if the double-bass is too recessed the work can lack heft and richness and the sparkling effects on the piano can sound cloying). This is really a very recommendable performance.
The Octet, performed by the Schweitzer Octet, is even better recorded (the double-bass here again being very present and adding richness to the soundscape) and the performance is beautiful; the Adagio in particular is every bit as ethereally lovely as one could hope.
The Endres Quartet (with Fritz Kiskalt as the second cellist) give us a String Quintet that is dramatic and mesmerizing by turns. I have never heard of the Endres Quartet, who seem to record for bargain-bin labels, but this is a truly impressive performance. The famous slow movement is spellbinding; the playing is more aggressive, less smooth than I am used to in this movement, but that for me was a plus--it intensified the mood of barely-suppressed terror that erupts intermittently in the movement.
Only two major chamber works are missing: string quartet #15 in G & the Quartettsatz.
On to the symphonies. As T. Fisher points out in his review, Symphonies 3-6 are performed by the Stockholm Sinfonietta under Neeme Jarvi, released by BIS. Sound quality is good and the playing crisp. Symphony 5 is my favorite of these, and this performance has all the Mozartean grace and gaity you would hope for. The Munich Symphony Orchestra performances of Symphonies 8 ("Unfinished") and 9 ("Great")--Schubert's greatest--are not quite in the same league; well-conducted to be sure, if lacking a bit in excitement at some climactic moments, but the horns don't cut it; there's even a downright sour note at 8:51 of the finale of the 9th. Mind you these are good overall recordings and amazing for the price! But they won't eclipse a first-rate recording (such as Mackerras/SCO).
The major piano works are not all here, but those that are are in good hands. Only one piano sonata is included, the D.845 in A minor. While not as sublime as the final three sonatas, this is in my opinion the best of the rest. The performance is by Walter Klien, taken from this Vox recording. Since Klien also recorded the last three sonatas for Vox, I do not know how or why this particular sonata was chosen. In any case, I know this performance well, having lived with this particular recording for a long time, and I admire it greatly; Klien is a great Schubert interpreter, as is Alfred Brendel, who covers the D.899 Impromptus.
The set is lighter on the songs, and what is here is sung adequately only; but I am not much into lieder so that is not a major deficit from my point of view.
In short, I am really glad I downloaded this, especially for the price---and I envy the newcomer to Schubert who, with one click, can download all of this wonderful music and begin exploring Schubert's music for this first time.
A Buffet of Schubert's Music - tasty selection! July 3, 2010
John Keating
9 out of 11 found this review helpful
I really can't add much to T. Fisher's well written review except to say buy this download. Actually, any of the 99 Most Essential Masterpiece packages is worth the asking price. I think I have purchased 9 of the 14 available simply because the quality of music is high and the value - Oh my the value!
Amazon continually offers specials when the packages are released - Usually at a substantial savings. I have purchased Handel, Mendelssohn, and this set for $[...] each. That's a total of 297 songs for $[...] bucks! About 30 hours of listening pleasure for less than a meal at Mickey D's - WOW!
Are these packages perfect - no. But I haven't found a better deal anywhere for near the price and the quality of the recordings is always very,very good. Please, if you enjoy listening to classical music, want a great selection of music by world class composers (The Greats), enjoy the idea that you couldn't do better anywhere else regarding stretching your entertainment dollar - these are the sets to buy!
Thank you Amazon for continually offering your customers tremendous values in musical enjoyment. Bravo!
An admirable crash course in Schubert with some real gems July 1, 2010
T. Fisher
43 out of 43 found this review helpful
This is another excellent collection overall of classical music from the X5 music group. Covering Schubert in 99 tracks is an impossible task. By the time he died at age 31, he had written over 600 songs alone. His complete catalog goes well above 900 catalogued works, many or most of which have more than one movement, or are collections of many songs in a single cycle. Any set of 99 MP3 tracks -- where one work can easily account for four or more tracks -- can really only barely scratch the surface.
So with any Schubert set, there will always be room for argument about what to include and what to leave out. It would be too easy to complain about what was left out, so I won't. Suffice it to say songs -- which is what Schubert was most known for when he was alive -- are under-represented, with mainly a few selections from the song cycle "Die Winterreise", for baritone and piano. Sacred music is also scarce, although Schubert wrote some really fantastic masses. A 25-minute selection of his Mass No. 2 gives a peek into this part of his work.
All of Schubert's symphonies except numbers 1 and 2 are present (there is no number 7). Symphonies 3-6 are performed wonderfully by the Stockholm Sinfonietta, a small but respected chamber orchestra, under Estonian conductor Neeme Jarvi, who happens to be one of my favorites. It's great to hear these works with just 30-40 musicians playing. It offers a really nice change of pace from hearing them in the usual treatment with full orchestra, which can go to about 100 players. It was a stroke of genius to include these performances here. I didn't have anything like these, and I'm really glad.
The most famous symphonies -- numbers 8 (The Unfinished) and 9 (The Great) are older recordings, but still sound really nice. They are performed by the Munich Symphony Orchestra under the great Austrian conductor Hans Swarowsky. I'm not sure when these were recorded, but Swarowsky died in 1975, so hopefully sometime before that. These are performances I had never heard before, and again I'm glad they're here.
Chamber music is well represented. The Arion Trio ably performs the two trios for piano, violin and cello as well as sonatas for violin and arpeggione (played on the cello). Trying to research the performers, I found out mainly that there are a lot of different groups all over the world performing as the Arion Trio. This particular Arion Trio does a good job, with enjoyable performances.
The two string quartets often regarded as Schubert's best -- nos. 13 ("Rosamunde") and 14 ("Death and the Maiden") -- are here. I really love "Death and the Maiden", one of the greatest quartets ever. The performance here is quite good. The "Rosamunde" music is featured at least three different times -- in selections from the original orchestral incidental music to the play "Rosamunde", in the string quartet, and in the Opus 142 No. 3 Impromptu for solo piano. Good stuff!
The famous Trout Quintet is also here. This version is well played, and the sound is nicely three dimensional even in MP3. This piece is a lot of fun, and has a unique instrumentation that makes for very original music. With the double bass covering the low end -- very unusual for a piano quintet -- both hands on the piano are free to tinkle away at the high end, with lots of "watery" effects created in celebration of the piscine theme. To end the set, track 99 is the song "Die Forelle" (The Trout), which was the source of the musical themes that were later expanded by Schubert into the Trout Quintet.
Bitrates are a bit on the low side, ranging from 176 to 251 Kbps, with most in the 220s. The sound quality is still pretty good, and the only works with bitrates below 200 are for solo piano. In listening to a minute or more of each track I didn't hear any strange encoding artifacts or distortion, although a little tape hiss peeks through very rarely and the performers of "Die Forelle" are poorly microphoned. The performances are very good overall; these aren't world-famous orchestras or ensembles, but most of the music is still top notch.
Total download size is -- are you sitting down? -- 1.31 GB.
Bravo, X5, on an admirable collection that makes the best of an imposssible task -- summarizing Schubert's work in 99 tracks. You could put out 3 or 4 more of these and still have a lot left!
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