[78-L] John McCormack

[Evan MacBeth]

Hi there,

Unfortunately not. There's the Odeon set recently released by Marston, and the complete Victor and HMV acoustic recordings set which is almost done on Naxos (let's hope that the 1912 of Silver Threads Among The Gold is in an appendix on the last disc, the current discs use the 1913 take twice and they are quite different).

When it comes to the electric era though you're well and truly on your own. There are a few Pearl/Opal discs that come up from time to time - McCormack in English Song, American Song, Irish Song, and a 2xCD set of the final recordings. There's also a 2xCD set of his earliest recordings, cylinders and discs. The cylinders generally sound pretty bad but the Gramophone Co. discs have endured the years much better. Having said that, they were all made before his formal vocal training and are a very different sounding John McCormack. 
Unfortunately they are products of their time: there's no digital NR but the treble is quite severely filtered.  Another thing to watch out for with these discs is that they are often prone to CD rot. 

There's also the recent EMI 4xCD "John McCormack: Icon" box which compiles the earlier CDs of material they had already released (but the CEDAR-ing doesn't sound quite as savage as the original EMI discs to my ears).  http://www.mdt.co.uk/mccormack-john-i-ll-walk-beside-you-emi-icon-4cds.html

Finally there's a few discs released by Symposium in the late 90s - John McCormack: Lieder Singer, International Opera Star, Art Songs In English, I Hear You Calling Me, and A Career Recorded
http://www.symposiumrecords.co.uk/catalogue/?q=John+Mccormack&x=-919&y=-235

Many of the Opal/Pearl, and Symposium discs also include alternate takes or previously completely unissued songs. 

These are all "themed" releases though, and you will end up doubling up on a lot of tracks - but it's all there is.  Nobody has released a chronological set of his Electric recordings as yet. 

Cheers,
Evan. 

> On 14 Apr 2014, at 5:00, 78-l-request at klickitat.78online.com wrote:
> 
> Apart from the Naxos set, are there any other comprehensive compilations 
> of his other work available on CD? Failing that, any CDs that don't 
> clash with that set? I'm not looking for "Favourites" or "The Best of" 
> compilations.