The Virgin Guide to Classical Music

by Jeremy J. Beadle

If you want listening to music to be a pleasure; if you want to know the six pieces of Bach which will give you the best grip on his work; if you were born to Brahm's Lullaby or first met Turandot on the terraces, The Virgin Guide to Classical Music is the first genuinely no-nonsense, plain-talking, entertaining guide to the music, the performers and the recordings.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0863696589
• ISBN13: 9780863696589
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: Virgin Publishing
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.69 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 8.5" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

Flawed but fun and useful

This book provides a short history of classical music from earliest times to the 1990s. It also recommends recordings of key works with annotations. The main problem with this highly readable work is its wild English bias (not unusual as readers of the Penguin CD Guide wil know). American music is hardly mentioned - no Copland, no Ives - and Gershwin works like Rhapsody In Blue and Porgy and Bess are dismissed. Meanwhile obscure British works are championed in loving detail. There are other surprising omissions, like Rimsky-Korsakov, and Australian music is also absent. All in all, worthwhile, but proceed with caution.