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Bargain but

Customer Rating:
At about 20 bucks this is well worth having. Especially with Chopin you want to hear multiple versions of the music. Rubinstein has a great reputation in Chopin, but I must say I think it undeserved: he lacks imagination and has a heavy hand. The sound is pretty typical early 60s: a bit dry and boxy but not worryingly so.

A great deal for such a low price

Customer Rating:
I must admit that I give 5-star rating for the value you get for such a low price. Arthur Rubinstein is one of the best, if not the best, performers of Chopin, and getting the entire box set for such a low price is a great bargain. Some reviewers mentioned about some sort of hiss when listening to the CDs. I personally did not hear anything. Anywise, even if you hear something, do not forget it is a remastered copy of old recordings. Not very old, but still.

Great music and performance

Customer Rating:
Disclaimer: I am neither a musician, music student nor some classical music know-it-all (some). I am simply somebody who enjoys what sound good to my ears. Pheeww.....

Now to the product; As with my other reviews on music I will attempt not to compare this CD set (of 11) to anything. All said, I found the performance to be of great quality and I suppose so was the composition. I'm way too new to classical music but still found the CDs to be great to listen to at anytime. I did not yawn (LOL) as I normally do when I do not enjoy music.

The Desert Island Set Of All Desert Island Sets

Customer Rating:
There may be a way of enhancing your life better than by spending $30 on this magical set, but I don't know what it is. If you want to take your life out of the mundane, just place any of the first ten discs of this collection in your player and settle back to be transported to a higher realm of being. Rubinstein's playing transcends playing - the sense that the music is playing itself rather than being "interpreted" is as strong as I have experienced. Some reviewers find it a little too low-voltage, and if you like your Chopin to be restless, mercurial, searching, and echt-romantic, this may not be quite to your taste. I think, however, that Rubinstein gets closer to the heart of this music with his luminously natural approach than rivals who make the music sound "complex". Rubinstein makes these pieces sound simpler than anybody else - a good thing because it's a sure sign he's making them a unity rather than a more-or-less miscellaneous collection of phrases and sections. This is especially true of some of the longer and more involved works: the Ballade No.1, for instance, regularly sounds as if the performer has pulled out the guns too early as they start banging away with abandon on the first climax only to make the remaining five minutes or so sound messy and anti-climactic. Rubinstein, by contrast, opens in highly poetic mode as if it's one of the Nocturnes, holds back on the first climax, but then builds and builds the piece, makes the presto section a natural outgrowth of the rest of the piece rather than sounding tacked-on, and gives the final chords a sense of apocalyptic inevitability that eludes almost every rival performance I've heard.

And it's this sense of inevitability that distinguishes almost every one of these performances: that, and the singing line Rubinstein constantly conjures out of the piano. The "Bel Canto" aspect is especially true of the Nocturnes and Waltzes but just try the middle-sections of the Scherzos, the 1st Piano Concerto, the Sonata No.2, to hear how Rubinstein excels in the cantabile aspect so important to this composer. You will "get" the melodies easily, even in the pieces you may be unfamiliar with. In fact, the best measure of a performance may be how quickly you learn the music from it. A bad performance has you listening numerous times to get the music but with Rubinstein a couple of listens is all you require.

The sound, likewise, is mostly treasurable. Sure, it's dated but the slight overlay of RCA 60's brittleness doesn't spoil the underlying velvety airiness of the sound. It "floats" and whispers. I find it more suited to Chopin than almost every modern recording I know.

Caveats? Disc 11, comprising recordings from 1946 of the Preludes, the Sonata No.2, the Barcarolle, and the Berceuse, is more a historical curiosity than a real musical experience (the clattery sound doing more damage to Chopin than any other composer) and the Etudes aren't here. For an almost-complete Chopin, you'll need outside performances of the Preludes and Etudes (I recommend Ashkenazy), but apart from those puzzling omissions (why didn't he record these glorious works in stereo?), this collection is just about everything you could ask for. It's as perfect a box-set as I've ever heard.

Chopin Collection

Customer Rating:
I haven't received that delivery. I wanted to contact your customer service and claim it, but it was not possible, your system is set in that way that it was not possible. . It is good that I can express it now.