Classical Good CD & DVD Guide: The Most Authoritative Guide to the Best Classical CDs and DVDs

by James Jolly

Contains reviews of recordings made by the world's greatest musicians found on compact discs. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0860249778
• ISBN13: 9780860249771
• Release Date: October 2004
• Publisher: Gramophone Publications
• Length: 1416 Pages
• Weight: 3.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.3" x 6.2" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

A user's guide to the Gramophone Guide

Brief observations that I've made after nearly a decade of using the Gramophone Guide: * The Guide is primarily artist driven. Think of Ralph Waldo Emerson's adage: "There is no history, only biography." In other words, artists make it all possible, and superlative ones need to be recognized and rewarded. Favorite Gramophone artists currently on the scene -- and this should be obvious by browsing through the Guide -- include Perahia, Argerich, Pollini, Manze, Hough, Joshua Bell, Hahn, Andsnes, Pires, Uchida, Aimard, Harnoncourt, Gardiner, Hickox, Maggini Quartet, Lindsay Quartet, William Christie, Rene Jacobs, Alessandrini, Rousset, Pierre Hantai, etc., etc. * It is not uncommon for Gramophone's most strongly recommended recording of a piece to currently be out of print. In such a case, rather than recommending a less worthy recording, the Guide will simply not make a recommendation at all for that piece. When the preferred recording becomes available again, it will be restored to the Guide. Thus, a newcomer often gets the mistaken impression either that no recordings of that piece have been reviewed (rarely the case), or that the piece is not considered worthy of a place in the canon (sometimes the case; see the next point). * Often a recording acclaimed by critics elsewhere is not included in the Guide -- for example, many issues in Hyperion's series of "Romantic Piano Concertos." Such recordings are not included because the music itself is not deemed of sufficient intrinsic musical quality. However, because Gramophone wants to support such an undertaking as a whole, those issues in the series that are found recommendable are thus *strongly* recommended -- e.g., the Hyperion volumes devoted to Saens, Moscheles, Scharwenka, Lyapunov, etc. * The music industry has scared the pants off the Gramophone critics with cries that the classical recording industry is doomed. Consequently, Gramophone often recommends recordings in the interest of supporting favorite artists. For example, Zimerman's 2004 disc of Rachmaninov concertos was his first DG release in several years, and the music itself was likewise recorded several years ago. In mortal dread that this great artist's recording contract might be terminated if this CD does not sell well, Gramophone hails it as a legendary-status benchmark recording (which it may or may not be). * An effort is made to determine at least one best recording that can be recommended in any given series of recordings -- often, to help promote awareness of it, this is the first or second CD in the series. Several or even many discs in a series may be recommended in the short-term, but usually one or two are rated more highly and thus are considered long-term "keepers." For example, in Vanska's series of Sibelius symphonies for BIS this is the disc of the 6th and 7th symphonies. Or in King's series of Vivaldi's sacred music, this is the disc of motets (vol. 2) and the disc with the Stabat Mater. Or in Bernstein's seri

The best guidebook to the Western musical canon

The most common criticism of this guide, particularly when compared to the heftier Penguin Guide, is that it does not include enough reviews. I find this to be rubbish, frankly. The reviews in the Gramophone Guide are taken from reviews that originally appeared in Gramophone magazine, which puts out 13 issues every year, with each issue containing *at least* 150 new reviews, for a total of over 13 X 150 = 1,950 new reviews each year. Call it an even 2,000; that's 4,000 new reviews over the course of two years. As an owner of the 2003/4 Penguin Guide, I doubt very, very much that it contains over 4,000 (!) new reviews that did not appear in the previous edition! Of course, not every review in Gramophone magazine is reprinted in the Gramophone Guide, and the cover of the Guide says exactly why: It contains reviews of only the "greatest" music in the "best" recordings. In other words, it's *selective* -- I don't know why this is so hard for people to understand! The Gramophone Guide includes *only* CDs that are recommendable: A recording, simply by *being in the guide at all,* meets a certain quality bar and is therefore recommended! And if a CD is not in the Gramophone Guide, it is far more likely that it was deliberately omitted and not that it wasn't reviewed. In being selective, the Gramophone Guide has essentially become *a canon of musical recordings*, the best of the best. Indeed, a more apt title for this guidebook would be "The Western Musical Canon in the Best Available Recordings." And really, that's all you need, isn't it? In his epoch-making 1994 book "The Western Canon," literary scholar and critic Harold Bloom had this to say about why a literary canon is necessary: "Who reads must choose, since there is literally not enough time to read everything, even if one does nothing but read." With more than a millennium's worth of Western music steadily proliferating on CD, the same could easily be said of listening to classical music! One must make choices -- often difficult choices -- and this is what the Gramophone Guide succeeds so admirably in doing. Gramophone's critics, in creating a musical canon, constantly weigh and measure and make qualitative decisions with respect to the big picture. They are keeping their finger on the pulse of the Western musical tradition, and they are not allowing themselves to be diverted by second-rate recordings of third-rate music. For this reason, for example, you will find only some reviews of Hyperion's recordings of Romantic piano concertos included. The others are not included *not* because they haven't been reviewed (they have), but because they aren't deemed of sufficient aesthetic value to warrant inclusion! Until you've familiarized yourself with, say, the string quartets of Haydn, Beethoven, and Bartok, or the piano sonatas of Beethoven, Schubert, and Scriabin, you really have no business *wasting time* with the comparatively imaginatively impoverished concertos of Fuchs and Kiel or Kullak a