Claudio Abbado’s career with Deutsche Grammophon stretched back over more than four decades. He was as much a man of the theater as he was one of the greatest of all late 20th century symphonic conductors, and many of his opera recordings remain unsurpassed in the catalog. Building on the huge success of Claudio Abbado – The Symphony Edition, comes The Opera Edition: 60 CDs presenting Maestro’s complete opera recordings for Deutsche Gramophone and Decca.

The programming for this, the final double CD in the series, is somewhat different from earlier releases. The first CD presents two complete Masses, the Missa Peccata mea by Lupus Hellinck and the Missa Nisi Dominus by Pierre de Manchicourt; these are complemented by a number of short liturgical works. The second CD demonstrates how a polyphonic Mass would have sounded in the context of a celebration of the Mass in the 16th century.

The great Norwegian cellist Truls Mork gathers into a box set of 5 CDs no less than 9 concertos from the vast repertory for cello and orchestra. Recorded during a decade (1991-2001) and released in their time as individuals, these recordings comprise the standard works of his instrument with huge appeal to audiences, namely opuses by Haydn, Dvorak, Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, Prokofiev, Miaskovsky, and some contemporary pieces by Aaron Jay Kernis. In the recorded performances of these pieces, Mork is paired by top notch orchestras such as London Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Oslo Philharmonic, Norwegian Chamber Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, and world class conductors such as Mariss Jansons, Paavo Jarvi, Eiji Oue and Iona Brown. The captured sound is marvellous throughout.

A 19-CD box set? Twenty one and a half hours of music? A 72-page book? Artefacts that include a receipt for her first piano? Who said the music industry no longer had money to burn?
For anybody unfamiliar with Sandy Denny’s yearning, evocative songs, her teeteringly vulnerable vocal style and the erratic contours of a career that ended shockingly in a fall downstairs in 1978 when she was 31, this eye-watering project may seem like ludicrous indulgence.