This 16-disc collection is even more ambitious than it appears on the cover. It's not just an anthology of recordings of music of the twentieth century, but an introduction to the whole subject, with a comprehensive text overview (or at least as comprehensive as you can be in 17 pages). The organization is chronological, and each piece is presented basically complete. Thus, there isn't room, even on 16 discs, for one piece per year, but it's remarkable how many years do get covered, and how many styles. The natural tendency ...
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This 16-disc collection is even more ambitious than it appears on the cover. It's not just an anthology of recordings of music of the twentieth century, but an introduction to the whole subject, with a comprehensive text overview (or at least as comprehensive as you can be in 17 pages). The organization is chronological, and each piece is presented basically complete. Thus, there isn't room, even on 16 discs, for one piece per year, but it's remarkable how many years do get covered, and how many styles. The natural tendency one might have expected from EMI to favor British music is resisted, and the later part of the century is especially pleasing in its diversity, with thorny scores by the likes of Harrison Birtwistle cheek by jowl with holy minimalists. One might protest a moderate slighting of American music; the absence of both Ives and Cage is puzzling in view of the entire disc devoted to Orff's Carmina Burana. But Gershwin, Bernstein, Adams, Barber, and Copland are all represented. The...
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