Bring together eight or ten CDs of most of Mozart’s chamber music in a boxed set? Schubert’s piano music? Chopin’s? Dvorak’s? Debussy’s? The Beethoven symphonies? The idea is certainly not new. But the unusual method definitely is. This time it isn’t a record company delving more or less carefully through its archives, choosing performances to form a vast panorama, one that inevitably results in compromises, since the company must select from its own catalogue. In our case, the entire Diapason magazine team is part of the project, searching high and low for the crème de la crème. The same uncompromising rigour we use to select five, six or seven gems from the flood of new record- ings each month was put into practice here, to create a series that, one boxed set after another, will gradually build an unprecedented ideal record library. Let it be understood that such teamwork is both a virtue and a necessity. We don’t rely on hazy memories or include recordings thought to be definitive merely out of habit or laziness; we make sure that everyone’s memory is refreshed through comparative listening. Each of the selections in the set is the result of patient and scrupulous listening, divided amongst the more than 30 specialists of the Diapason team. When necessary, we base our criteria on rarity: this helps to choose between top performances—and gives us the perfect chance to bring some forgotten treasures to light. Should we have chosen homogeneous groups, bet on a single interpreter, for example the marvellous and imitable Horszowski and Szigeti for Mozart’s violin and piano sonatas? We decided to go in the opposite direction for three reasons: to avoid competing with record companies that may still have this rendition in their catalogues; to lessen the risk of including a version that many people already own; and particularly, to showcase a variety of different approaches to the same composer by confronting one against the other. This can be cruel when a version is mediocre or merely pretty. But at this level of excellence, it will always be fascinating.

Eine CD-Kollektion mit der Kammermusik Mozarts, Schuberts Klaviermusik oder der von Chopin, Dvorak oder Debussy? Das ist vermutlich keine neue Idee. Jedoch stellt diese Zusammenstellung eine Ausnahme dar, denn es handelt sich nicht um die Zusammenstellung eines Labels, das nach Aufnahmen in den Archiven gesucht hat, sondern um eine Auswahl der Redakteure des französischen Diapason Magazins. Das erklärte Ziel hierbei ist, nach und nach eine ideale Sammlung Klassischer Musik mit Aufnahmen der Extraklasse zusammenzustellen. 30 Spezialisten haben hierbei genauestens die verschiedensten Aufnahmen miteinander verglichen und so birgt diese Box bekannte Highlights und verborgene Schätze.