Pentatone Classics has announced on their website that "Our Remastered Classics Series Is Now Completed".
http://www.pentatonemusic.com/catalog
http://www.pentatonemusic.com/catalog
Not a shock, and hopefully Universal Classics will pick up the mantle on its own label. And we got so much good stuff - but a darn shame it ended when it did. 115 SACD issues (comprising probably one and a half times that many LP issues) makes it by far the biggest quad reissue campaign ever.
Still annoyed they didn't complete the Kubelik Beethoven cycle with the 3rd Symphony, though.
The initial owners of Pentatone were senior management of Philips, so I'm pretty sure Universal gave them a sweet deal when they closed that branch down. The new owners aren't (I believe) connected to the history of Philips, so it's not shocking that they were less interested in the series. The whole operation is, I suspect, being funded by Gordon Getty now, which allows them to record essentially what they please and go after big name artists like Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Alisa Weilerstein. It is what it is, and I'll continue to purchase their new recordings selectively.I'm sure sales were robust and royalty payments to Universal were on the conservative side for this magnificent reissue program to have flourished as well as it did. I know I did my part accumulating probably half of the Pentatone RQR SACDs.
With Universal now gravitating toward BD~A/RBCD combos for their newer classical releases, pairing 3, 4, 5 titles or more on one BD~A may be their best solution to release the remaining titles but I'm not sure I enjoy the redundancy [and bulk] of including RBCDs in the package to compensate for the lack of a CD layer on a BD~A as opposed to SACD.
But then beggars can't be choosers, I suppose.
Now let's get busy on those Angel/EMI Quads. There were some incredibly diverse titles in that lot!
I made a list of all the available ones five or so years ago: http://www.sa-cd.net/showthread/109126/109182 (note that some are only stereo), and you need to add Abbado and Barenboim on DVD-Audio (the Barenboim in particular is excellent, but it's a pain to assemble).Hows the Beethoven/Kubelik cycle? Good mix and performance? Is there a better option in surround for the Beethoven symphonies?
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