In love with this box set

I finally got this box set I've been craving for (nor realising that good friend Hock Doong has this). The most ridiculous myth about Herbert von Karajan was that his repertoire of works is conservative and limited to celebrated works of Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms and Tchaikovsky. It's interesting to note that nobody has surpassed his re-recordings of Beethoven's Nine symphonies which he made FOUR times throughout his life (once for Philharmonia and three versions from Berlin Philharmonic). The conservative myth is still nonsense, since those closed-minded buggers failed to notice he recorded contemporary (in his time, of course) works from Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Bartok to name a few. Richard Osborne noted that Karajan premiered the radical Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta in Vienna amidst cat-calls. There is also his only Shostakovich recording of his 10th symphony he made which is now hailed as "best recording evar" and his Prokofiev 5th shared similar honour as well. Recently DG (if not mistaken) released a Walton 1st with Philharmonia which sat on dust decades after forbidden by the composer himself to it's release.

Who would've thought Karajan would record a set devoted to composers of none other than the "elusive" and "elitist" 2nd Viennese Schools? It was released on LPs in the 70s and amusingly Karajan boasted it sold copies enough to stack up the height of an Eiffel Tower. It's not limited to their accesible, pre-12tone, tonal works such as Passacaglia op. 1 (Webern) Pelleas et Mellisande and Verlarkt Nacht (Schoenberg). Karajan also recorded the first ever atonal work (Variations op. 31 by Schoenberg)for a large orchestra, some most difficult piece ever written for orchestra (Berg's Three Orchestral Pieces) and also some of most intellectual (albeit hard to digest) works by Webern. One wonders why Karajan did not record Messiaen, Ligeti to name a few.

In Karajan's disposal is his magnificent Berliners, played at all their glory. In my experience of his recordings, surprisingly he is the best "modern" exponent after Boulez or Gielen. While Boulez might be on the intellectual side, his exposes more on the orchestration, texture and sound effects of the works he conducted, which doesn't make the music trivial. The timbre of the best string section in the world helps to produce a sensous "Verklarte Nacht". While most listeners find Variations to be a little bit inaccesible, the orchestra projected a haunting, yet one of the most alien performances ever captured on record. And the brasses surpasses even the legendary Chicago Symphony for sheer savagery and ferociousness in Berg's Three Orchestral Pieces, which is probably the most relentless sonic assault ever performed in my experience of classical music. The three cd box set have since gone out of print, and these cds have been produced seperately ever since. Now condensed to merely 2-series single cd set, these cds are hard to come by as well. Freaking grab these if you see them.

*UPDATE: The rest of Webern's works (Op. 5, Op. 6, and Symphony Op. 21.) are MISSING from either of the two. They only included Webern's Passacaglia op.1 in the new cd re-release. Looks like any used copies of either the 3-CD or 4-LP box sets would be scarce to find.