The “Rise of the Masters” series of MP3 downloads gives you 100 tracks from some great composers for only $1.99. Ignore the goofy looking album covers and don’t let the suspiciously low price throw you off - the performances are largely very good, and I haven’t heard anything less than at least average.
I was looking to boost my classical music collection, and was floored at this deal - had to share the find with my fellow dopers. Enjoy!
P.S. - The same series is available on iTunes, but for higher - albeit still cheap - prices. If you’ve never downloaded MP3s from Amazon before, it’s very easy and can synch right into your iTunes.
Ah, they’re not that goofy-looking. (For those who haven’t seen them, they have photographs of the composers—actually, of models made up to look like the composers, and they haven’t done too bad of a job of it.)
Those “Rise of the Masters” albums (or whatever you want to call them) are offered by the “X5 Music Group,” which also has other deals, such as their “99 Most Essential” series. Those aren’t as cheap, but they’re still pretty inexpensive, and they include other composers besides those in the “Rise of the Masters” series (Mendelssohn, Dvorak, Saint-Saens), as well as compilations grouped by instrument or theme. Buyer beware, though: some of these have significant overlap with the “Rise of the Masters” series (and some of the customer reviews/comments have gone to some pains to point out where).
Also worth noting, for anyone interested in Baroque music: the “Big Baroque Box” has a ton of it, currently priced at $1.29. (This is the latest of the “Big Box” sets offered by the Bach Guild. They’ve also released “box sets” devoted to Mahler, Tchaikovsky, Brahms, and Haydn, similarly cheap when they were first offered, but now up to their full price of $9.99.)