Astor Piazzolla - Astor Piazzolla 1921-1992 [10CD Box Set] (2005)

The box set didn't come with a booklet, but it looks like about half of it (4 hours 54 minutes out of the total 9 hours and 20 minute run time) is made up of the following previously released material (much of which is otherwise out of print).

A 10 CD box of always interesting, often great, music by Piazzolla. Though recorded over different years, the sound quality, while not uniform, is always clear, and appears to be true stereo.

Since the net/blogsphere/trackersphere are a bit poor in Piazzolla’s work, maybe this will entice people to dig their albums from their chest and pay some homage to one of the greatest musicians from the 20th Century.

The place where the album was recorded and name of all musicians are clearly written on the back cover of each CD. It would take a long space to write every and each name of the recording places, performers and ensembles Piazzolla has recorded these albums. Not to mention that every and all information is on the back cover of each album included in this release.

Some may notice that the gap between tracks in some of the albums are constant at 2 seconds, a usual gap from home recorded CD albums. I don’t really know what (and how) Membran achieved to do that. The CDs are original retail and somehow and for an unknown reason for me they decided not to preserve the original gaps from the recorded master. I presume they’ve got the masters, ripped the audio and burned new CDs without worrying about the true gap of the original recordings. Unnecessary to say that this is a budget collection and they didn’t take the due care to make the best anthology they could concerning information. But the essencial info is there on the artwork.

I truly recommend that for those who have followed Piazzolla’s career and even for those who don’t know him. He was what we may call a really virtuoso and recreated and made a true revolution on Argentinean most popular and great music.