I've been rather intrigued by these dirt cheap Brilliant boxes myself.  If
you order them through Berkshire Record Outlet and wait the few weeks, the
price becomes ludicrously small.  I was wondering about their Klara Wurtz
box of complete Mozart sonatas.  I haven't been able to find out anything
about miss Wurtz other than that she studied under Zoltan Kocsis.  I was
also wondering if this box contains any of the non-sonata piano works.

One Brilliant boxset I'll almost certainly be ordering is their
hilariously opportunistic 5cd "Great Pianists of the Twentieth Century"
set.  It's got Rachmaninov doing "Carnaval", Cortot doing Chopin's 2nd
sonata, Michelangeli on the Debussy Images, Moiseiwitsch with a Wagner
transcription, etc.  etc.  I imagine the transfers are either pretty
crude or stolen-- if the latter then I'll avoid it on ethical grounds.

Royal Classics seems to be competing in a similar field, a little more
expensive but with a strong cast of reissue talent.  They are now the
purveyors of Cluytens' Beethoven set, as well as Berglund's Bournemouth
Sibelius cycle, which sells for under $20 in the US.  On the single disc
front I can very highly recommend their Horenstein Tchaik 6 and I'm
certainly gonna investigate the Barbirolli La Mer.

Jon Lewis
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