By DANIEL J. WAKIN


Classical music box sets have been bounding into the market in recent years like a rain of bowling balls.

Among them, Brilliant Classics has issued hefty collections of the complete Mozart (170 CDs) and Bach (155 CDs). Naxos is issuing big chunks of Haydn this year for the 200th anniversary of his death: the complete string quartets, symphonies, piano sonatas, concertos and Masses.

The box-set release this month of Yo Yo Ma, the cellist, is a mere 90 discs. But it is remarkable for other reasons. First, Mr. Ma is still very much alive and in no need of posthumous commemoration. Many of the discs, although most of the collection is remastered, are still available. The lavish packaging, with a 312-page hard-bound booklet, velvet lining and Annie Leibovitz portrait, is at odds with Mr. Ma’s downto- earth style. Most striking is the list price: $789. In contrast, recent box-set releases by The Beatles are in the $200 range.

Now, Mr. Ma is arguably one of the world’s most famous classical performers. He combines extraordinary charisma, musicianship and technical prowess in his playing.

But $789?

“To me, that’s a bargain,” said Alex Miller, the general manager and senior vice president of Sony Masterworks, pointing out that the per-CD cost is under $10. Mr. Miller said the project was his idea, not Mr. Ma’s.

“This was a way to not only honor his 30 years with Sony,” he said, “but to go back and scrub clean for contemporary audiences these records that have been in the marketplace and never been re-examined.” Asked whether Sony expected to make money from the release, Mr. Miller said “the intention was to honor a singular career.”

Box sets have long been around, of course. But what seems to be their growing presence now has particular reasons. Record companies are trying to appeal to older buyers, with more money to spend and longer attention spans.

More profoundly, digitalization has changed recorded music to a collection of data. The container is irrelevant, said Evan Eisenberg, author of “The Recording Angel,” a study of the cultural impact of recorded music.

Yet the impulse to have and to hold an object, as well as to collect it, remains. A box set “preserves something,” Mr. Eisenberg said. “It preserves a time that we want to remember, that we want to remain in. It suggests permanence and solidity and a bunker against the passage of time, and transience and decay.”