120 Years of Deutsche Grammophon - The Anniversary Edition 1

This set spans the history of DG, and is grouped into orchestral music, solo instruments, opera, spoken word, etc. Because of the many excellent reviews, I will only add that although I already had about half of these recordings, the other half make the purchase more than worthwhile for me. I have spend most of my time exploring the recordings that I do not have, the sound is great. The sound on the recordings that I already own is the best that I have heard, so the duplication is fine.The book that is included is excellent and gives a good history of recorded classical music in general and DG’s unparalleled contributions. It also sheds some light on why particular recordings were chosen for inclusion here. The historical recordings are particularly interesting and not readily available; the sound is often limited but generally ok. Personally, It would have been fine with me if more older recordings were included as I enjoy exploring musical recordings.I believe that no one has mentioned that one of the bonus CDs is a one disc Blue Ray audio of the complete vK Ring Cycle. Wow. This alone sells for over $80 and offers the best sound available for this beautiful version of the Ring.I would purchase this set as soon as possible if it is of interest to you, the price has already increased since I purchased it less than one month ago. If it goes out of print, it will extremely expensive on the secondary market.

Beautiful, well-packaged set with excellent book about the history of DG. Has an interesting variety of material - orchestra, concerto, chamber, opera, song, spoken word, etc. Mostly mainstream repertoire; many superb performances and recordings. Discs range from what appear to be original programming (40+ minutes) to full (70+ minutes). One caveat - this is probably best suited for real connoisseurs of this type of set; several CDs are of "historical" recordings and the sound quality is in some cases very, very poor compared to modern (even digitalized older) analog recordings and may put off some listeners - I doubt I will listen to them more than once and only for nostalgic purposes. For long time collectors like me, there are also many duplicates with other boxes/CDs that I already own. Newbies may be best served by one of the many other fine DG (and other label) comprehensive boxes.

Beautiful box with great information about the label and its history.A must have for DG fans.

All are masterpieces! Very clear sounds! Prompt delivery ! Thanks for Amazon team.Highly recommended.

Wondering what to buy myself for Christmas this year I came across a mention of this box in a music magazine, and after reading a very brief description I had to order it. And it came Christmas Eve, and will likely be in constant demand over this holiday. To set the stage, this is the 120th anniversary of the founding of Deutsche Grammophon, and to celebrate the significant event, the team at DG went through the archives (and what archives they must be!) to find 121 discs (there's a "bonus" disk I'll talk about in a moment) that represent not just the evolution of the label, but also the evolution of music.The 120 box comes suspended in foam in a cardboard outer box to prevent damage. Lift the lid and you see an array of discs plus a thick booklet and a smaller casing for extras. There's 121 CDs, all in original art sleeves (although the spines are not labelled, unfortunately) plus a BluRay audio disc, for 122 discs in all. The "bonus" 121st disc is called "2018 and Beyond" and looks at the next set of releases on DG with some unreleased tracks. There are four CDs of never-released content as well. The interesting and informative 200-page book takes you on a history through the label, as well as the technologies in use during the past 120 years. There's three languages in the book (English, French and German) in separate sections, plus a complete discography at the end. The "extras" in the package include five copies of historical documents plus six album cover postcards.The music is divided into types, such as Orchestral, Opera, Piano Solo, and so on, with each type of music represented by an array over the history of the label (and sublabels such as Archiv). There's some remarkable historic recordings here, back from the cylinder days on the first four discs, plus a wide range of recordings in each category over the "modern" timespan, as well as a few historical performances. For example, there's Caruso and Van Kempen, with 13 tracks of the two of them recently recovered from a metal disc.The selection of music is not a traditional "greatest hits" collection you might expect, but a range of music from the ever-popular recordings (Steinberg's The Planets, for example) to some relatively unpopular (at the time) releases such as Ligeti and others. The Avant-Garde section of the discography features 12 discs that may bother some purists, but show the breadth of DG's releases over the years, and their popularization of new composers. This is a stunningly wide variety of music and historical to modern recordings, and while the music was marvelous on all the CDs (especially the older works which have been remastered). the sense of listening through a museum tour was always there for me. Fascinating.Overall, this is a wonderful collection of music and history. No other label can lay claim to 120 years, and this box shows the depth and vision the DG leadership had over the past 12 decades. Not a cheap box set, but worth every penny. The best Christmas present I can remember!