Review: Dohnányi's Cleveland Box--40 CDs of (Almost) Unalloyed Excellence 

I was lucky enough to have attended his cleveland performances for his tenure there. His Bruckner is fantastic, some of the best out there. A gripping ninth in the mold of jochum. Paul

It would’ve been great if they were able to license the live Cleveland “box.” Those recordings complement these ones so well!

So great that this wonderful conductor is being offered a whole video here! He has never received the same attention as other great conductors. His Dvorak 7 is the best, most thrilling, dark and passionate I‘ve ever heard.

That motive in the Bruckner 5th you talked about, especially on clarinet, always seems to me to take a leap into the 20th century. Not quite Schoenberg but knocking on the door. Which reminds me, I hope we do get a Dohnanyi Vienna box. While his Wozzeck is generally available, the Lulu has vanished since the two act pre-Perle three act version is not considered viable now. But it really is a superb performance as it stands.

I chose to believe you were able to do both locations because Scotty beamed you.

I'm pleased to see my complaints on Usenet about Decca, and its mistreatment of the Cleveland Orchestra, affirmed after all these decades. I share your outrage that Dohnányi was not allowed to finish his Ring. There was a concert performance of "Siegfried," and I think a broadcast tape exists, but recording sessions did not follow it. I don't think there was even a concert performance of "Götterdämmerung." What a missed opportunity, and what a slap in the face to the orchestra and conductor!

The Box is finally out & we must buy. Such great level of performance & many wonderful memories as you were reading out the disc selections. Just wish we had the option to purchase box without the mahler 😂😂😂😂

Mine was delivered yesterday!🎉 Last night I listened to Dvorak 7 and 8. Wow! It will be great to listen through these records again. I feel at the time of their original release I took them for granted. What an orchestra!

Is "deconstruct" the word you were looking for vis-à-vis Mahler? Haven't opened this box yet, but I'm excited to get to it. I really hope Decca does a Vienna (& any random leftovers) box. It'd be great if Warner would do one too, & also Telarc. Decca has some amazing stuff here with this, the Dorati/Detroit, Mehta/LA, & Blomstedt/SF boxes. I do think it's very funny that they chose to use the Decca two-fer reissue cover for Dvorak 7-9, though.

More talks about individual orchestras please! History, character, state of play today...

When Dave dropped the cube, I literally shrieked and winced... For ~$300.00... be more careful, Dave!

Thanks for another great talk. Dohnanyi also made some recordings with the Philharmonia and I'd like to know your opinion on those compare to his Cleveland ones

Perhaps one of the benefits of the age of the fly-in-fly out conductor is that orchestras can maintin their distinctiveness. No conductor hangs around for long enough to put their individual stamp on the "sound", assuming that modern conductors even have that aspiration... Szell trivia: I was talking to a very old RSNO hand long ago who reminisced about Szell's time in Glasgow, where he was based before Cleveland. According to this chap Szell was a quite magnificent cook & was renowned for dinner parties featuring superb cooking & would even commander railway dining cars on tour & cook up a storm.

Dave, just out of curiosity, what do you consider to be the best recording that the Cleveland Orchestra ever made of Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique?

A cavalcade of excellence! Not sure Dave if you just coined that phrase but if you ever write an autobiography you can call it that. BTW I have been looking for the Brahms Symphonies which are impossible to find it seems. I do not like Mahler much but I like Dohanyi's Mahler 5, I was happy that it is one you liked. Dohanyi/Cleveland Dvorak and Schumann Symphonies are the ones I listen to the most. I think that the Cleveland/Dohanyi recordings, together with the San Francisco/Blomstedt recordings, represent the state-of-the art of what modern recording technology can achieve in a studio setting, they are the reference in my collection. I might purchase this box to get the 30 or so recordings that I do not have.

Is this actually available? Amazon has only three sellers, and from Amazon

Well, it looks like this has already sold out. Do we trust Decca to print more of them?

So, none of his Beethoven cycle in this box? Kind of strange, no?