[radrd]

The Columbia House music club has every one of Beethoven's 9 symphonies conducted by Otto Klemperer (6 CDs, not a set) on sale for $2.99 each. With shipping/processing, it came to a total of $34.

They are from the Klemperer Legacy series recorded in 1958, put out by EMI Classics (24-bit remaster). I did a little research on these CDs on Amazon.com, and it seems that Klemperer probably wasn't quite as good as Karajan, but for $34, I'd say I got a hell of a deal! Amazon doesn't even have any of them other than the 9th readily available. At just over $5 a CD, I don't think I will be disappointed.

The only thing I'm a little worried about is that they might be out of stock. Columbia House doesn't exactly make it a point to update their listings frequently.

Even if I don't get all of them, I'd say it was a good find.

What do you guys think?

 

[aos]

The only thing I'd worry about is sound quality. Remastering done in last year or two at least does a fantastic job - in fact I end up buying tons of remastered stuff from 60's that ends up better sounding (if you can stand a bit of hiss) than most 80's digital recordings. But 1958 is a bit of a gamble, though at the price it is hard to argue. Though, the Karajan 1960's cycle is available for $20-25 Canadian here for two years now and that's pretty damn cheap.

 

[radrd]

These were released in 1998, so the remaster should be pretty decent. Right?

The few reviews of the 3rd and the 9th that I read on Amazon suggested that the remastering was pretty good.