After months of dross and crossover ruling the markets, the old man is back where he belongs: on top of Parnassus.
The new Daniel Barenboim set of Beethoven symphonies on Decca registers at numbers one and three on Nielsen Soundscan’s point-of-sale charts. And HJ Lim’s set of the complete sonatas is in at number eight. How very retro….
Here’s the chart…. and (UPDATE) here‘s how they did it.
1 Beethoven for all/ Barenboim (Decca)
2 Moonrise Kingdom soundtrack
3 Beethoven/Barenboim
4 Classical stress relief
5 Dvorak cello concerto (Telarc)
6 Eric Whitacre (Decca)
7 David Garrett (Decca)
8 Beethoven sonatas (EMI)
9 Audiomachine
10 Yuja Wang (DG)
Didn’t hurt that the complete Beethoven symphonies and the complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas (on EMI with HJ Lim) were only $9.99 each at iTunes US.
Correction, the Beethoven Symphonies are $12.99 and a different album than “Beethoven for All”. They share the same cover design and artist. The symphony set (equivalent to 4-5 CDs is a much better buy at $12.99 than the single CD length “Beethoven for All” at $9.99. “Mastered for iTunes” is just an Apple marketing term. It’s the same 256 kbps AAC Plus format that’s been used for a few years (with the introduction of “iTunes Plus”)