Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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...

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!

This volume comprises 1556 pages and each one of them is a treasure-trove of opinion,erudition,and general knowledge.
It is a completely revised edition of "The Penguin Guide" and encompasses the key - and important - classical recordings that have been newly issued and reissued on CD over the last 20 years.

DVDs have been added to this volume as well as sound-enhanced SACDs. There is a new section calleld "Key Recordings" - listed as an appendix and these are CDs or DVDs that may be used as a basis for a personal collection. It runs for 42 pages and lists some of the "rosetted" recordings that have an outstanding or extraordinary quality to the recording and interpretation. This is very helpful as the reviewers are highly-respected in their areas of expertise and their recommendations should be heeded.

The reviewers are Ivan March, Edward Greenfield, and Robert Layton, with the assistant editor being Paul Czajkowski. These men have written for "The Guardian", "Gramophone", "BBC Music Magazine", and other respected journals, magazines, and newspapers.

Their collective insights and expertise is one reason why this guide is the most highly-respected in the field. For collectors of classical CDs and DVDs this volume is indispensable and belongs in every music aficianado's library.

Timothy Wingate Ottawa CANADA

This latest edition of the Penguin Guide to CD's & DVD's remains an indispensible resource for the lover of classical music. This is still the most complete, comprehensive and up-to-date guide to what CD's are available and how a number of talented and experienced reviewers rate them. All major composers are listed as are all of their major works;numerous CD's are reviewed and recommended for each. Ivan March, editor, has made some changes moving some composers to the semi-annual update book due to size constraints. He has added a very useful "key" that designates certain CD's as building blocks for a comprehensive classical CD library and an appendix listing recommended CD's of certain select performances for certain "important" composers.

The Gramophone Good CD Guide, Third Ear(a bit dated), and The Rough Guide are good supplements to The Penguin Guide. The Penguin is still the book to own if you could only choose one. It is important to remember that some CD's covered are only available in Europe, although they can be easily ordered over the internet from UK or European suppliers.

The Penguin Guide has outlasted competition from Third Ear Classical Music, The NPR Guide to Building a Classical CD Collection, The Gramophone Classical Good CD Guide and The Rough Guide Classical Music to maintain its place on Mt. Olympus in the classical music critic game. For 2003-04 the authors have added a couple new wrinkles -- a discography in the back of what they call "key" recordings being the most significant -- and adding reviews of selected DVDs in their principal volume. I think what separates this book from the others -- including Jim Svejda's now deleted "Insider's Guide to Classical Recordings" -- is the way the three authors come to agreement on recordings. All the other books are largely based on the opinions of a single reviewer and the book editor. Penguin Guide, which has been in publication continuously since 1984, has alwasy merged the opinions of its three authors, making it the most reliable and moderate of these books. I believe this is what has contributed most to its lasting value. Unfortunately, the three can come to agreement and dismiss some of the most cherished CDs in the world -- see their reviews of any Bach CD by Glenn Gould or many of Leonard Bernstein's New York recordings -- while they extoll the provincial value of certain British performers and composers whose music is of marginal value worldwide. Still, there is no sugar coating the fact that Penguin Guide is the most long-lasting and authoritative guide in classical music criticism. The newest tome, with its additional DVD reviews and the helpful key recording appendix, shows the authors can still be innovative after all these years. I'd like to see a new edition of Third Ear come along soon to see how well it compares. That prospect was diminished when editor Alexander Morin and Harold C. Schonberg -- the author of its foreward -- both died in the last couple years. Until someone else comes along to belt out a new edition of Third Ear with some new additions, Penguin Guide is still the best game in town for anyone wanting information on classical music recordings.

I would never buy a c.d. with out consulting this book. Have been using the books for the last 20 years. Have always been most satisfied with their recommendations

By now the Penguin Guide has its fierce advocates -- and equally fierce (and vocal) detractors -- but nevertheless, there are few classical music guides that approach this volume's scope. Yes, there is the occasional glaring omission, but any reference work like this cannot hope to cover the entire universe of recordings, and any writers involved will inevitably show their colors by what they choose to include.

But these caveats aside, this book remains an excellent starting point for anyone interested in classical music, and especially for a beginner bewildered by hundreds of recordings of Beethoven's Fifth in the stores. While the Penguin's first choice might not be *everyone's* pick, in my experience their recommendations are at least in the universe of good recordings to consider. Often their first choice won't be mine, but their picks are rarely completely worthless.

The format can be a bit tricky at first, since for each composer, the works are grouped by orchestral works, chamber music, opera, solo piano, etc. -- fine for an experienced listener, but what if you're new and have no idea whether Britten's "Les Illuminations" is an opera or not? (And there's no index of individual works that might help.) But once you get the hang of the layout, it's not difficult to use.

Yes, the font size chosen by the editors could be a little larger (for some of our aging baby-boomer eyes), but the plus, on the other hand is that the thick volume includes a huge number of reviews. My biggest complaint remains the inexplicable omission of recordings by some world-renowned composers like Kurtag, Xenakis and others, and in this respect the book may inadvertently comment by omission. Just because someone is missing here, doesn't mean that he (or she) is not a good, or at least well-recorded composer.

Even with all these hesitations, however, the fact remains that in the world of printed guides (as opposed to online sources, and there are many), Penguin has few equals, both for the quantity of reviews and the quality. Much of the time the writing is excellent, and (again) once you are used to the editors' style and biases, you can judge for yourself against the yardstick they provide.

Highly recommended, and almost (but maybe not quite) the only game in town.

I have used various editions of this guide for more than a decade. I have also compared it to many other guides out there, including Grammaphone, Rough Guide, NPR Guide, All Music Guide, etc. It is much more comprehensive than any of these other guides--you can find all the major recordings rather than just a few the editors select. The ratings are pretty accurate, too. My only complaint through years has been the British bias it exhibits. The best way around this is to listen to various artists, which of course may not always be possible. Sometimes I also use the following principle (which I have often violated, though): If the piece is recorded by a countryman or an orchestra of the nationalty of the composer, and it has received three stars, prefer that to any English artist/orchestra even if the latter has higher ranking. So my Satie piano works CD is by Entremont, Schostakovich by Borodin Quartet, etc. I know this is too simplistic, and it may not always be advisable. For example, the British pioneered the authentic performance movement, and once the acidity of their violin tones were corrected, we ended up with some marvelous new performances of the classical repertoire on smaller ensembles. In sum, if one can show a little care for its biasses, it is a highly valuable guide.

Of all the guides on any subject, this wonderful book and its companion yearbooks by the same author[s] may be the most bankable I have come across. The "Rosettes" really are special recordings, and the narrative evaluations of both the performances and the recording quality of each disc are uncannily dead-on. However, it is a big book, and one can spend rather a lot of time hunting down a particular recording if it was not classified where one guessed it should/would be. (Sometimes, I know a recording is there because I came across it once, but still I can't find it again.) If ever there were a candidate for a searchable CD-ROM rom text, this is it. Still, if you buy a lot of clasical CDs, this is indispensable.