EMusic 25

One of The Gathering Note’s affiliate partners is Emusic.  Regular readers and especially readers from the very beginning know that I think highly of Emusic.  For those who don’t know, Emusic is a subscription download service that offers one of the best classical music catalogs online.  It boasts Naxos, LSO Live, San Francisco’s in house label, CSO Rsound, BIS, CPO, Artek, Chandos and many other labels familiar to classical music fans.

If the breadth of the catalog isn’t enough, Emusic’s pricing is a deal.  For roughly $.25 a track, you download a set number of tracks each month according to the number of tracks you want each month.  Do the math.  A disc with one, four movement Bruckner symphony prices out at about $1.00 (Tintner’s cycle on Naxos, Norrington’s vibrato free recordings, and Haitink’s CSO recording of the Seventh are all available for download).

New subscribers to Emusic get 25 tracks free!  The offer is a great way to experiment with new repertoire and dip your toe into the music download water.  Periodically, we will assemble lists of albums totaling at most 25 tracks, the number of tracks you would get free as a new subscriber.

For this inaugural Emusic 25 I will focus on Beethoven and Brahms, two of the most familiar names in classical music.

Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, Osmo Vanska and the Minnesota Orchestra (BIS – 4 tracks)

Beethoven’s 9th is a good place to start.  This recording has Vanska and the Minnesota orchestra at their best.  Vanska used the most current version of the score available for the recording and effectively balances the emotion of the music with a lightness and transparency that never weighs the music down.

Beethoven Piano Sonatas Vol. 2, John O’Connor (Telarc – 9 tracks)

Anyone who caught John O’Connor’s recital at Meany Theater last year knows O’Connor can tap out elegant and refined performances of Beethoven’s piano sonatas with what appears to be little effort.  Telarc’s cycle of the complete sonatas was well received when it first came out on disc.  Volume two in the series showcases O’Connor’s affinity with these sonatas in warm performances of the “Wladstein,” “Tempest,” and “Les Adieux” sonatas.

Brahms Symphony No.1, John Elliot Gardiner and the Orchestre Revolutionnare (Soli Deo Gloria – 7)

John Eliot Gardiner’s new cycle of Brahms symphonies imbues these classic works with Gardiner’s historically informed approach.  Also notable is Gardiner’s attempt to juxtapose Brahms’s symphonies with compositions by Brahms’s contemporaries.  So here we get the First Symphony, “Shicksalslied,” and Mendelssohn’s “Mitten wir im Leben sind.”

download divx kick-ass full lenght

Brahms Piano Concerto No.2; Schumann Introduction and Allegro appassionato; Antoni Wit and the Polish National Radio Symphony (Naxos – 4)

This was the first recording of Brahms’s Second Piano Concerto I ever owned.  I still pull it off the shelf and drop it into the CD player from time to time.  It is a thrilling interpretation without being garish and overly indulgent.  Wit and Idil Biret are a sympathetic and highly capable duo.

Four discs, 24 tracks (one track left over to use as you want) worth of Beethoven and Brahms.  Two newer albums and two that have been around for awhile.  All four albums are available for free if you try Emusic.