DIGITAL BACH EDITION
FOR IPOD
Johann Sebastian
Bach is one of my favorite composers:
I adore baroque music, and Bach's
works are the apex of that period.
His works cover a variety of forms,
from chamber music to oratorios,
from keyboard music to cantatas,
and, of course, his wonderful organ
music. Bach was quite prolific in
his life, composing more than 175
hours of music - at least that's
what we have; a large number of
works were probably lost as well.
I have all of Bach's
works on disc - as well as in my
iTunes library - and many of them
in multiple recordings. I formed
my Bach collection in 2000, during
the celebration of the 250th anniversary
of Bach's death, when many wonderful
recordings were released, and when
two complete sets were published.
If only this
had been around then! Hänssler
Classic has now released its acclaimed
edition of Bach recordings by the
Internationale Bachakademie Stuttgart
and Helmut Rilling, in digital format,
on an iPod!
Here's what you
get for EUR 499: an 80 GB iPod (current
price EUR 249), and all of Bach's
works, pre-loaded on the iPod. You
also get a set of backup DVDs containing
the music, in case you want to be
able to sync it to the iPod, or
put it on a computer. Now, if you
wanted, you could get a complete
set of Bach's recordings for
EUR 90, but that set, while containing
many good recordings, is rarely
excellent. The Hänssler Edition
has a consistently higher standard
of recording and performance, and
contains Helmut Rilling's excellent
Bach's cantatas. It also contains
a number of top-notch performers
recording Bach's keyboard works,
the part of the set I probably listen
to most.
But Hänssler
didn't just rip the CDs. They have
done a first-rate job of tagging
the music. Each track is tagged
with the BWV number (the Bach catalog
number), the full name of the work,
all the performers (in the Artist
tag), and - a first for classical
music in my experience - words for
sung texts in the Lyrics tag. Each
album is listed with the album number
in the set, followed by the name,
and all the files have album art
attached to them.
This said, if you're
not a German-speaker, you may have
a few problems, as all the tags
are in German, as are the "lyrics";
though this latter choice makes
sense; if you want English translations,
though, you'll have to look on the
web. But if you're enough of a Bach
fanatic to buy a complete set of
his works, that will be a small
price to pay for having all this
music in digital format. Ripping
the 140 discs or sets yourself would
take several days, and tagging them
as thoroughly is a nearly super-human
job.
They did make one
mistake though, which they need
to fix. iTunes has a Sort Album
tag, in which you can put the name
of an album if you wish several
albums to sort as one in iTunes.
They set this tag to Bachakademie,
instead of leaving it empty as they
should have. On top of that, the
Sort Album tag is hard to change;
if you have a Mac, you can use Doug
Adam's Batch
Set Tracks Sorting Tags AppleScript
to erase the contents of this tag
and thereby have all the albums
display separately when you view
iTunes' browser.
I would also like
to mention a bigger mistake, which
makes this set a questionable purchase
for many. Hänssler ripped all
the tracks at 128 kbps; this is
good enough if you're listening
to an iPod outdoors, where there's
noise, but even Apple now uses 256
kbps for its iTunes Plus files.
I use 160 kbps myself; I find that
a good trade-off between size and
quality. For the cost of this set,
Hänssler should have included
a top-quality bit rate, rather than
skimp - though they may have wanted
to differentiate between this digital
set and the actual CDs. It would
have meant 5 or 6 backup DVDs instead
of three, but that's a small price
for them to pay.
So who would want
to buy this set? Obviously, if you
don't have an iPod, and like Bach,
this is a perfect way for you to
kill two birds with one stone. The
recordings fill up 10 GB of an 80
GB iPod, so you have plenty of room
for your own music. Even if you
do own an iPod, this is a bargain;
Hänssler sells the CD version
of this set for EUR 1349. If the
bit rate doesn't bother you, this
is a great way to get top-quality
recordings of all of Bach's works
in digital format.
Kirk McElhearn
A great way to get top-quality
recordings of all Bach's works in
digital format ... see Full Review
