Count me in as another fan. I snagged a couple of LPs from this set in my thrift shop hunting days. Good for you for getting the entire set. I doubt many own the whole thing in vinyl.

 

Those LPs look wonderful and if I were a vinyl enthusiast, I'd certainly have found them all.

This may be of interest to you, but someone on eBay is selling many of them as a wholesale lot:

Bartok Edition LP lot on eBay

 

I've got most of the old Hungaroton LPs from the set, and only little on CD ...

 

I picked up most of the orchestral cds at Princeton Record Exchange some time ago and have enjoyed them very, very much. It was my introduction to Kossuth, a work that really should get more playtime. The Bluebeard's Castle in that set is tremendously powerful, too.

 

I had a number of these recordings in the original 2LP editions. Wish I still did.

 

I've got the vast majority of these cds, but not as a set per se. I think I never managed to get hold of some of the piano works, and some minor chamber pieces, and that's it.
I had dozens of those wonderful gold-sleeved LPs as well. What I remember about them best is the copious documentation, that meant I almost had a proper book of everything about Bartok ! And the terrible record surfaces, crackly as hell on a lot of them. Was so glad to replace them on CD!!
There's some stupendous stuff in this box, the Tatrai quartets, a couple of a young Kocsis doing piano concertos, some fine piano music with Dezso Ranki. I do think the big orchestral pieces are better served elsewhere (including the abandoned New Edition, with Kocsis swapping ivories for baton!). The most essential part of this older Edition are the vocal and choral works, which open up a whole new side to this composer, stupendous stuff.

 

The Kocsis Piano Concertos 1+2 has always been a favourite of mine, particularly the 1st movement of no.1, where some important, subtle accents don't appear in other recordings, and not in his later recording either, IMHO.
I bought a lot of the LPs in a rather pristine condition at shops in Budapest around 1989, and the surfaces were good. Budapest was a nice, cheap place for a Western student to pop in on vacation, back then.

 

I was in Budapest at the same time, and remember the red star coming off the parliament overnight! But I was buying the CDs!!!

 

Looks great. I just got the Boulez conducting Bartok cd box-set, which is great.

 

Which set? Sony or DG?

 

This is a pretty consistently fine set. I like this set very much too; it was my first CD purchase (from Newbury Comics at Boston) when I studied in the US many years ago.

Hungaroton was making a new series of SACDs with the late Zoltan Kocsis using critical editions of the scores nearly a decade ago, which, Alas, was seemingly discontinued after Kocsis' death; they even had a website tracking the progress at one point. That series could easily be the best-researched and best-performed set of complete Bartok had it just been finished (at the level of excellence of Mr. Kocsis).

 

I wouldn't buy the Hungaroton box irrespective of its desirability due to over-duplication but I really would like to have this part of it:

 

I have several of this collection on the original vinyl/LP. Great set, at least of what I have. Every LP is also wonderfully packaged as they each include attached booklets within the gatefold. Really nice.