JOHNNY CASHThe Legend: Limited Edition (Columbia/Legacy, 5 CDs and 1 DVD, $330) CHARLIE POOLE"You Ain't Talkin' to Me": Charlie Poole and the Roots of Country Music (Columbia/Legacy, 3 CDs, $40) With tracks from 1954 to 2002, the Cash set comes in a 12 x 16-i
Back in September 2002, I interviewed Michael Tilson Thomas about the launch of a bold new project with the San Francisco Symphony: a complete cycle of the Mahler symphonies to be released on hybrid multichannel SACD via the orchestra’s fledgling in-house label, SFS Media. At the time, Thomas already had clearly formed ideas about the sound he wanted:
In his monumental six-part work The Oxford History of Western Music, Richard Taruskin begins the volume devoted to the 19th century with Beethoven’s only opera, Fidelio, which debuted in Vienna in 1805 before its final revised version was staged there in 1814. Here we have an opus of searing intensity that signaled the arrival of Romanticism in music.
Coming in November, The Brit Box isn't just any old English package. It's four CDs of U.K. Indie, Shoegaze, and Brit-Pop Gems of the Last Millennium - specifically, from 1984 to 1999. Not only that, the traditional phone booth depicted on the cover is, according to Rhino's press release, "illuminated with a battery-powered flickering light bulb!"