This is an intriguing surprise. I'll definitely get it; I have the regular CDs and these are outstanding performances.

Given that my CD set cost less than £20 many years back, and given that the set is now on Discogs for just £2.18, this is very interesting indeed. But the cost to bring this to Uk must be £100+. A very great set however.

We were fortunate enough to have Rudolf Barshai as Principle Conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony for six years in the 1980's ('82/'88) when the Shostakovitch symphonies were one of his forte's. Fantastic performances that invariably brought the house down. It will be interesting to hear this set to see how it compares but not sure I will buy for 'auld langsyne' at the suspected price.

Sadly his only recorded legacy of all the fine work he did at Bournemouth was the 8th.

This is of course a fantastic set of recordings, and I've owned the CDs for a long time. However...these were digital recordings made 1992-2000 and do we have any reason to think they were made at anything but CD resolution?

This is what the listing from a seller on eBay says about these reissues:- Barshai's monumental bestseller has finally been released on SACD! A superb performance that approaches the essence of Shostakovich! Excellent recording. Newly reissued from the master tapes recorded on U-Matic owned by the label for this release!

The complete symphonies conducted by Barshai, a monumental work in the history of Shostakovich recordings, have been released in SACD hybrid form for the first time. For this release, the digital master tapes on U-Matic owned by the Brilliant label were played back and recorded in analog, and then mastered in the analog domain (see separate page for details of the process). This process has already been adopted in the SACD project for the digital recordings of the Berlin Classics masters, and the current method of converting early digital sound sources to SACD is a time-consuming and laborious one. This complete set, which was originally an excellent recording, has been reborn as an even higher quality sound source in SACD! The increased capacity and careful mastering by Christoph Stickel will further enhance the evaluation of this disc. Furthermore, while the conventional CD version contained 11 discs, this SACD hybrid version contains 9 discs.

The recording of all 15 Shostakovich symphonies, recorded by Rudolf Barshai (1925-2010) in sessions with the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra from 1992 to 2000, is one of the most famous recordings that has continued to sell explosively since its release. The reason why it has become such a big bestseller despite being an imported complete set with a large number of discs is that it is priced affordably, but the content is still great. Not only was Barshai the premiere performer of the 14th Symphony, but in the 1990s after the so-called thaw, the acceptance and frequency of works from the Soviet era, including Shostakovich, increased, and the demand for large orchestral works increased following the Mahler boom. With such high-level performances and excellent recordings, it was inevitable that this complete set would sell well. In addition, the quality of the individual pieces is consistent because they were recorded intensively by one orchestra in the West, and the high functionality of the Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra, and above all, the extremely limited recording sources of Barshai himself at the time due to his defection to the West, are also likely to have had an impact. The interpretations of each piece are highly certified, and the high precision of the orchestra in response to them and the excellent recording that captures them simply are also noteworthy elements. Originally a project by Cologne Radio and the orchestra, the recording started with No. 7 in 1992 and contained 12 pieces, but Barshai recorded No. 13 to No. 15 at his own expense in 2000, completing the total of 15 pieces (this is the reason why these three pieces were the only ones with a different producer apart from the two initial tracks).

This project has focused on converting ETERNA's analog recordings to SACD, but since digital recordings were introduced much later than other labels around 1985, there are many recordings that are suitable for high sound quality, so we decided to have them mastered by Christoph Stickel, just like the analog recordings. His mastering method is not very different from analog recordings, even though the source is digital. He first converted the original "U-Matic tapes" (there are very few facilities in the world that can play them) from the original home country to analog, and then remastered them in the analog domain as usual. Although the recording method of the original master is different, this allowed us to convert them to SACD without any discomfort compared to mastering with the conventional analog master. Please check out the sound quality. For this reissue, the master tape was airlifted from the label to the studio of Christoph Stickel, a mastering engineer based in Vienna, where it was mastered in the analog domain, and then digitized to DSD for the SACD layer and PCM for the CD layer in separate systems before being released for sale. Not only for this reissue, but for this project as well, the master is remade from scratch going back to the original master tape in the country, not from a copy master from the home country in Japan, so you can fully enjoy a generation of quality based on the condition of the good tape. Mastering was achieved in the most ideal way possible at present. The effect is remarkable, making it possible to reproduce the quality that remained on the master tape extremely faithfully, and mastering only in the analog domain and direct DSD conversion have an even greater effect on the sound quality. The sound is surprisingly clearer and has a higher resolution than before, so we can expect even greater appreciation of the performance.

Thank you Mark for your invaluable contribution to the discussion. Manna from Heaven. Suggests it will be a "must buy".

I suspect the eBay seller I ordered this from initially made a mistake in the listing, so I managed to buy this for only $44.80! !Sometimes you can be lucky:-) The listing was quickly altered to $170.

In response to the comments regarding mastering procedure, U-Matic was a common videocassette format in the 1970s into the early 80s, which was also the main format used in early digital audio recording (it's just a bigger version of the betamax casette which is descended from it). It's a bit of a stretch to say it's a rare format, but whatever. These aren't exactly early digital recordings, but maybe they were using older equipment at the time.

I received this set today. I've only heard one of the discs, but my initial impressions are extremely positive with regard to the sound. Definitely demonstration quality even compared to Caetani or Kitajenko. The purely musical and interpretative qualities of this set are of course well known.

What was your source Mark? Nothing listed on here.

You can find several sellers on eBay offering this set for sale. The one I ordered from has sold out but there are others. I use the search term "Tower Records SACD Barshai" and that gives 5 results. CD Japan have it too:- https://www.cdjapan.co.jp/product/NEODAI-233851 Good luck!

Thanks Mark. As you say, it is listed on CDJapan but that link is not shown at the top of the page. It is priced at £81 sterling which is better than expected