Thursday, February 27, 2014

Amazon MP3 for classical music on a budget: $45 for a great, semi-comprehensive classical collection

Last night I spent $24.  Bought the complete Mozart Symphonies, all of Beethoven's Piano Sonatas, all of Bach's Harpsichord works, all of Rachmaninoff's Piano music, and a few other goodies:

Mozart Complete Symphonies $5.99

Rachmaninoff Complete Piano Music $5.99

Beethoven Complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas $5.99

Bach Complete works for Harpsichord $2.99

Big Baroque Box vol 2 $0.99

111 Amazing classical Cello $0.99

111 Amazing classical Violin $0.99

Multi-Viral, featuring Julian Assange $0.00

Part A total: $23.93

For the sake of completeness, within the past year or so, I've also bought these guys [thanks Joe, for pointing out the initial bonanza!  Some I may have bought for diff't price, but I'm showing current prices.  Also, I might swap out a Big Box Sets for some of the Rise of the Masters, where available (like Brahms), but the Rise of the Masters are still quite solid]

The 99 Most Essential Mendelssohn Masterpieces $2.69

Bach: Complete Organ Works $2.99

Big Haydn Box $0.99

Big Schubert Box

Rise of the Masters (100 Supreme Classical Masterpieces) [each going for around $2.19 right now]

  • Brahms
  • Handel
  • Schubert
  • Schumann
  • Tchaikovsky

Green Hill Celtic Music Sampler $2.99

All the Allegro Classical discs (free): 2011/Fall 2011/Spring 2011/Summer 2012/Spring 2012/Winter 2013/Winter

Part B total: $21.60

Super Grand total: $45.53

I'm pretty sure nobody can argue that my musical tastes aren't well-rounded, what with the Celtic music in there and the song featuring Julian Assange :)

A person can then play all this great music using Amazon's cloudplayer, or it all fits nicely on Copy.com and you can have it on any computer local and play it with whatever you want (like ncmpcpp with mpd).

So far, I'd say the quality of all of these has been at least fair to good, and some of it is as good as any version I've ever listened to.  All for less money than one box set by Gardiner or Herreweghe (not saying those aren't still worth it, just trying to put it into perspective).

Enjoy them classics, on a budget!