(FORTUNE Magazine) – Arthur Rubinstein The Rubinstein Collection (BMG)

Get ready: Just before the next gotta-replace-your-whole-collection technology establishes itself, the record companies will be squeezing the last pennies out of the compact disk this Christmas with an avalanche of extravagant boxed sets. As an outstanding example, I give you BMG's 92-disk set of the complete recorded music of Arthur Rubinstein.

Actually, I don't dare give it to you, because it retails for 1,500 bucks. But I wish I could, for unlike most of the snazzily packaged musical mausoleums burdening the gift shelves at your local Tower Records, this one is something to cherish. BMG would have you believe that the meticulous reengineering that has cleared these performances of all offending pops, crackles, and snaps is what distinguishes the sound of The Rubinstein Collection. No. What matters here is the unmistakable sound of Rubinstein himself, the uncanny singing quality of his playing.

To my mind, Rubinstein was the century's greatest pianist. Horowitz may have outdone him in technique, Schnabel in interpretive depth, but no one came near him for pure, transparent musical beauty. Anchored at one end by Beethoven, Rubinstein's repertoire was a straight shot down the middle of the 19th century, an arc built upon Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, and--preeminently--Chopin. For the first 32 years of his nearly five-decade recording career, he committed to disk less than one hour of Mozart. Only once--ever--did he record Haydn. Even the 20th-century composers he favored were really late-blooming flowers of the 19th: Rachmaninoff, Ravel, Szymanowski. No one felt the romantic blush of the 1800s more deeply than Rubinstein.

But as great as he was, does BMG actually expect anyone to buy this 48-pound gorilla? At $1,500, the price is really not that bad--about 25 cents per glorious minute, and it all comes in a package that, if you upholstered it, would make a pretty substantial piece of furniture. The payoff for BMG doubtless lies in the release of individual volumes of the collection over the next few years.

Thus will the prudent buyer wait for such gems as Volume 47's Chopin waltzes and impromptus, or the all-Schubert Volume 54, which features a breathtaking "Wanderer Fantasy" recorded in 1965. Still, anyone can be prudent. Who else but you, though, would plunge for the whole thing? If your spouse complains, just have him or her sit down and listen for a few minutes. And if your extreme self-indulgence isn't immediately forgiven ... get a new spouse. Because anyone who doesn't love Arthur Rubinstein deserves a mean and lonely life.

--Daniel Okrent