The 99 Darkest Pieces Of Classical Music

Various artists | Format: MP3 Music

Product Details

• Original Release Date: October 31, 2010
• Label: X5 Music Group
• Copyright: 2010 X5 Music Group
• Total Length: 11:03:49
• Genres:
  • Classical
• ASIN: B0048NUUS2
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (103 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #386 Paid in MP3 Albums (See Top 100 Paid in MP3 Albums)
  • #23 in MP3 Downloads > MP3 Albums > Classical

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

204 of 207 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Some dark, some spooky -- some neither, but still great October 31, 2010

By T. Fisher TOP 100 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:MP3 Music|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is another collection of great music at a low, low price brought to you by the X5 group, this time on a "darkness" theme released on Halloween 2010. This should be a must buy for anyone new to these "99 most whatever" sets. At the bargain "Daily Deal" price of $1.99 for over 11 hours of music coming in at 1.07 GB, it's not even worth thinking twice if you're new to classical music or to these collections. Just get it.

There are a lot of "greatest hits" here. Favorites like "The Ride of the Valkyries", the opening to Beethoven's 5th Symphony, Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King", Tchaikovsky's "Sugar-Plum Fairy", and the famous bits of "Carmina Burana" will be known to everyone. Same with nice versions of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" and "Night on the Bare Mountain", which many will know from Disney's Fantasia movie. And a whole lot more, really.

Quite a bit of the music is wonderfully spooky -- like the opening Totentanz by Franz Liszt (too bad it's such a short excerpt), the famous Toccata and Fugue for organ by Bach, or the "Aquarium" from Saint-Saëns' "Carnival of the Animals", which sounds like it should be in a Harry Potter movie. And again, a whole lot more.

The "darkness" theme works a lot of the time, but definitely not all the time. Since when are allegros from Mozart symphonies (Nos. 25 and 40) dark? Or anything from Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" -- even if the end of "Summer", included here, does have a furious edge to it? There is plenty of light music here that doesn't really fit the supposedly dark theme.

But who cares, really? It's still great music.

Is the set worth it if you've bought the earlier ones? For me, at the Daily Deal price, it is. This collection has 43 new recordings of music not featured on the previous "99 most whatever" sets in my music library. Sixteen are recordings of music that has appeared on previous sets, but performed here by different artists. The remaining 40 tracks are outright copied from earlier sets -- the most repeats are from the Allegros set (16), and the Relaxing set (10), but many appeared on other thematic or composer collections.

A lot of these "new" recordings are modern -- there is a good dose of Shostakovich. Also the first part of Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring"; some contemporary composers such as Arvo Part, Henryk Gorecki, or Krzysztof Penderecki; and some composers that were new to me, like Earl Hatch or Alfred Fissinger. It's nice to see that as X5 is coming closer to exhausting the vaults on Beethoven, Mozart, Bach and Vivaldi, and are turning to more modern composers to fill up these sets -- bravo.

For me, having a lot of this music already, the value of the set really came down to two things. First, it's a good mix of good music I can put on in the background when I feel like it, without having to make my own playlist. That's nice sometimes. Second, it gives me about 10-15 main tracks I was very happy to add to my collection. Most important was track 28, the 1st movement of Henryk Gorecki's Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. The 2nd and 3rd movements from the same performance were featured on the "99 Most Relaxing" set, so this completes the work. That alone, for me, was worth half the price, at least.

I have a big preference for full works rather than excerpts. Of course there are a lot of short cuts from longer works on a set like this. But there appear to be 20 full-length recordings of shorter works here, which is good.

At this writing I have listened to extended samples of all the new tracks in this set, and the quality of the recordings and the playing is uniformly very good, sometimes excellent. Bitrates are variable, averaging 175-249 kbps, but only three tracks are below 200 kbps -- all of them for solo instruments, which in general require less data to obtain similar levels of quality.

I keep wondering how long the X5 Group is going to keep putting out these sets. I guess the answer is as long as people keep buying them.

Strongly recommended for anyone new to classical music, recommended for others.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars I feel smarter already :) November 25, 2010

By DasBierMeister

Format:MP3 Music|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is the best bargain I have bought in my entire life of 29 years. I'm only at track 16 and I can already tell that this is well worth the two dollars. I'm a man who listens to most genres of music, and this is the first collection of classical music that I ever bought...and I am one happy man. There are so many songs that give me memories of great movies, my middle school music class, and of course it is brewing new ones as I speak (or typing this review). Even if you're not a fan of classical music, I still suggest that you purchase this product. YOU WILL find something you'll like on this. BUY NOW! It's only two dollars for 11 hours of timeless music that defines the era of man.
P.S.
If you're one of those people who think that classical music is just for rich snobs or old farts, think again. The last two albums I purchased from Amazon were by Black Label Society and Slayer.

21 of 24 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely Spooktacular! October 31, 2010

By Mark Twain

Format:MP3 Music

Great for Halloween. I've only listened to the first 11 songs, and I already feel like I've gotten more than I paid for. Excellent selection, and it is obviously a great value. It is really getting me in the mood to hand out candy to the victims, err, I mean children .