The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs and DVDs 2003/4: The Guide to Excellence in Recorded Classical Music [Paperback]

Edward Greenfield (Author), Ivan March (Author), Robert Layton (Author), Paul Czajkowski (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Penguin Guide to Compact Discs and Dvds | Publication Date: September 30, 2003

The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs and DVDs is the largest and most comprehensive survey of classical music on digital audio and video discs ever published. It covers thousands of recordings, offering candid evaluation of their relative artistic and technical merits, highlighting notable performances, and pinpointing the best buys. This guide takes into account the many hundreds of new and reissued CDs and DVDs that have appeared in recent years while also including all the major recordings of each work-from remastered vintage recordings to the latest releases. This essential reference work is designed to help select the very best video and music discs available today.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"More valuable than ever to any serious collector of classical music." (The Wall Street Journal)

About the Author

Ivan March is a well-known lecturer, journalist, and writer in the world of recorded music. Edward Greenfield spent forty years on the staff of the Guardian and is a regular BBC broadcaster. Robert Layton is a journalist and broadcaster.

Product Details

• Paperback: 1616 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (September 30, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0141013842
• ISBN-13: 978-0141013848
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.8 x 2.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,698,886 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars British bias, November 25, 2003

By 

Anand Ramachandran (Bangalore, India) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs and DVDs 2003/4: The Guide to Excellence in Recorded Classical Music (Paperback)

I have been using the Penguin Guide for many years. By and large their ratings are reliable.However, they have a serious British bias. For example, Simon Rattle can do no wrong. This may be because finally one of their own has actually "made it". Simon Rattle's Beethoven cycle is decent, however it lacks the consistency of for example, Abbado or Harnoncourt's cycle.It is certainly not a front runner among modern cycles. However, the Penguin gushes over it (so does BBC music magazine). Morover, Barenboim's cycle is not even mentioned which I find curious indeed. Similarly, Gardiner can do no wrong. So I think this should be used in conjunction with Gramophone and American guides like the one edited by Alex Morin and not treated as gospel truth.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Less info than previous (2002) edition for important works, January 16, 2004

By 

Mr. Allan K. Steel (Sydney, AUS) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs and DVDs 2003/4: The Guide to Excellence in Recorded Classical Music (Paperback)

I have the previous full (2002) edition and it is great.

But in this new edition, for many of the key works they seem to cover a lot less of the important recordings than they did in the 2002 edition! Not sure why: do they have many new recordings pushing out old (better) recordings, or are they adding more composers, or is it something else???

Also, I agree with the other reviewers on the British recordings bias; they waste so much space waffling on about these when the space could be spent on other recordings.

Anyway, if you have the 2002 edition, you will not gain a lot from this new edition, and you will have to look back at the 2002 edition to find out more info for very many works...

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars New features make this guide even better than before!!!, August 15, 2004

By 

Julio Castro Karg (Guadalajara, Jalisco Mexico) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs and DVDs 2003/4: The Guide to Excellence in Recorded Classical Music (Paperback)

This newest edition of the Penguin Guide offers some interesting new additions, including a very helpful sign (a key) to mark what the editors think are the "key recordings" of many of the works reviewed. In addition to that, all of those key recordings are grouped in an appendix at the end of the book, making it extremely easy to find them!

If you own the previous edition (2002) you might be having doubts about buying this new one. I had those doubts myself! However, I've just bought it last month (I ordered it here at amazon.com) and I've found many new interesting recordings! I also noticed that, due to space restrictions, some of the recordings listed in the previous edition aren't here anymore, so using both editions will give you an even greater amount of information!

The following thoughts are based on the review that I wrote of the previous edition (2002) of this guide:

This is, without any doubts the most comprehensive classical CD guide you can buy!

Although I also like, and would recommend, the Gramophone guides, the amount of information contained in the Penguin Guide is simply amazing! While the Gramophone guide lists several composers with ample and informative reviews on two or three of the recordings that they consider to be the best choices of a certain work, the Penguin guide includes many more recommendations of each work, although sometimes with much shorter reviews. The amount of composers and works listed and reviewed in this guide is incredible!

I bought this guide (2002 edition) almost two years ago (from Amazon.com) and every single CD that I've bought since then, following this guide's recommendations, has proven to be the right choice! You just can't go wrong with the wealth and quality of information that you'll find within this guide's pages!

This is an absolute must for any classical music lover!