Brahms - Complete Works: L'Oeuvre Intégrale, Gesamtwerk (60 CD) (2008)

As one reflects on the sheer magnitude of this set, something quite amazing is made manifest: Brahms wrote more vocal music than anything else; yet it is probably the least-mined vein of his output. Of course a handful of well-known works fall into this category— The German Requiem , the Alto Rhapsody, Gesang der Parzen , the Liebeslieder Waltzes , and the Vier ernste Gesänge . But these occupy approximately four CDs out of the 26 that are devoted to hundreds of songs, a cappella quartets, duets, sacred motets, female choruses, and the Magelone cycle. Taken together, Brahms’s vocal and choral music accounts for 43 percent of everything he wrote. The next largest category is chamber music—string quartets, quintets, and sextets; piano trios and quartets; sonatas for violin, cello, clarinet, and piano; a piano quintet, clarinet quintet, clarinet trio, and a horn trio—accounting for approximately 27 percent. Orchestral works and works for piano (solo and duo) are about equally divided at approximately 14 and 15 percent respectively. That adds up to 99 percent. The remaining one percent hasn’t gone missing; it’s in the organ works on disc 60.