The Berlin Years

This isn't intended to be a rounded view of a box which I know has many excellent things in it (a fine Gurrelieder, those fascinating late Dvorak tone poems, possibly the best Deryck Cooke/Mahler 10 on record etc). The general very high quality of these recordings will be known to many collectors.And there's the rub. Many collectors will have most of this content, making purchase for them hard to justify, even at Warner's relatively good price (not reflected in Amazon's current inflated price - it can be got about £30 cheaper for those who know Leamington Spa and Nottingham retailers etc).It might seem churlish to comment on what a set is not, but I wonder whether Warner might have lured more people in with extra slightly unusual content - some video content, some audio perhaps from some of the BPO's annual Europakonzerte, or such like?I note the addition of a Barber Adagio; otherwise, it has to be reported that this set isn't absolutely complete: there was a short but attractive collection of lollipops (Bernstein Candide Overture, Elgar P&C1, Satie, Dvorak Slavonic Dances etc) which Rattle and the orchestra did at the beginning of its tenure, released as part of a BPO principal conductor celebratory box by EMI. Warner/EMI appear to have forgotten about this - or been unable to include it.