Complete Columbia Album Collection (67 CD)

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Pierre Boulez – The Complete Columbia Album Collection

Sony Classical is delighted to announce an unprecedented reissue of the recordings made by Pierre Boulez for CBS/American Columbia. They are all being issued together for the first time in a single Sony Classical box set of 67 CDs. Every recording comes from the best source; several have been newly remastered from the original analogue tapes, such as Bergs Altenberg Lieder, Op. 4 (1967), Seven Early Songs (1972) and Carter's A Mirror On Which To Dwell.

One of the towering figures of modern music, Boulez began his conducting career in 1958 in Baden-Baden, Germany. His remarkable achievements in Europe brought him to the attention of George Szell, who invited him to make his US debut in 1965 with the Cleveland Orchestra. Boulez went on to serve in Cleveland as principal guest conductor and musical advisor from 1967 until 1972, and has maintained close ties to that elite ensemble ever since. In 1971, he became chief conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra in London, and the same year he succeeded Leonard Bernstein as music director of the New York Philharmonic, holding that illustrious position until 1977.

Principally with those leading orchestras, Pierre Boulez – who began his conducting career in order to do justice do his own challenging works – quickly garnered the reputation of a peerless interpreter of Berlioz and Wagner; Debussy and Ravel; Schoenberg, Berg and Webern; Bartók and Stravinsky; Messiaen, Varèse and Carter. Early on, CBS began documenting that reputation with the benchmark recordings now being brought together in a single release.

The series began in 1966 with a complete recording of Berg’s Wozzeck at the Paris Opera and Debussy’s La Mer, Jeux and Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune with London’s New Philharmonia (“A record that needed to be made” – Records & Recording). Both won Grammys. It continued into the 1990s with one distinguished release after another, far too many to list here. A few highlights: Stravinsky’s Sacre du printemps, a Boulez speciality, recorded in Cleveland in 1969 (another Grammy winner), Debussy’s only opera Pelléas et Mélisande at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 1970 (“A revelation” – Saturday Review; “…a delicacy and clarity I have never before encountered” – New York Times), and, that same year with the London Symphony Orchestra, the first complete recording of Mahler’s Das klagende Lied.

Boulez’s New York Philharmonic recordings of Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra and Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé brought him further Grammys in 1973 and 1975, respectively. Other acclaimed opera recordings followed, including Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle and Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron, both with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. There were a number of surprises and rarities, too: Handel’s Water Music, Berlioz’s Lélio narrated by Jean-Louis Barrault, Wagner’s rarely heard choral work Love-Feast of the Apostles, and a controversial, stimulating Beethoven Fifth Symphony. These are, of course, all to be found in this new collection.