The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music 2009 [Paperback]

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

Book Description

Series: Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music | Publication Date: November 25, 2008

This has remained the best and most successful guide to classical music for more than forty years. Fully revised by its team of eminent authors and written with wit and passion, The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music offers reviews of all the latest releases as well as the finest established recordings. It also includes an overview of the greatest historic performances, major period instrument recordings, an in-depth survey of the best of the budget-priced CDs, and the core collection of 100 handpicked, must-have CDs. Now published annually for the first time, this book is essential reading for every serious classical music fan.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Indispensable, illuminating, and comprehensive."
-The Times (London)

"The collector's bible . . . you cannot go wrong with this guide."
-Daily Telegraph (London)

About the Author

Ivan March is a well-known lecturer, journalist, and personality in the world of recorded music, and acts as consultant to Squires Gate Music Ltd, an international mail order source for classical CDs.

Edward Greenfield was for forty years a music critic at The Guardian. In October 1993 he was given a Gramophone Award for Special Achievement and in June 1994 received the OBE for services to music and journalism.

Robert Layton is a journalist and broadcaster.

Paul Czajkowski is the longtime editor of The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music.

Product Details

• Paperback: 1602 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (November 25, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0141033355
• ISBN-13: 978-0141033358
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.8 x 2.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #828,120 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

60 of 67 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Better Title: Penguin Guide to the British Classical Music Recording Industry, January 7, 2009

By 

Matthew J. Waterman (New Hampshire, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music 2009 (Paperback)

I should start by saying that I am a big fan of the major British recording labels (Hyperion, Chandos, Decca, EMI, etc.), but there is a lot more to classical music than the output of these (admittedly excellent) labels. The Penguin Guide seems to neglect if not ignore the rest of the industry. Moreover, Penguin has made the editorial decision to address only CDs that they wish to recommend. While a valid approach, I find it much more instructional to know (additionally) what a reviewer dislikes and why. Another difficulty inherent in this approach is that an individual work may appear in separate reviews (pages apart) because of its coupling, making it easy to read a review of a particular disc, but very difficult to get an overview of any particular piece of music.

"Classical Music: The Listener's Companion" (a "Third Ear" guide from Backbeat Books) is woefully out of date, not as thorough in terms of the inclusion of lesser known composers, and a little uneven editorially due to the sheer number of contributors. But I've found it to be far more informative and in-depth, and while it is now more than seven years in print, it can still claim to cover all but the most recent additions to the canon. Reviewers are just as apt to tell you what to avoid (and just as importantly, why to avoid it) as they are to make a recommendation. Their knowledge often reaches back to the mono days, so you feel you're getting a sense of comparison and perspective which the Penguin approach lacks. And they organize entries by individual work, so if you find yourself looking for, say, a recording of the Tallis Fantasia, then you only have to look in one place. In the Penguin Guide you will find reviews of CDs containing the Fantasia on SIX different pages (seven or eight different CDs), making it hard to sort them out other than by their coupling.

If you're willing to have a classical music collection comprised primarily of recordings from Chandos and Hyperion (again, not necessarily a bad thing), and if that doesn't make you feel as if you might be missing out on something else, then the Penguin Guide will make your life a little easier. They will make the decisions for you about what you should put in your collection. If, on the other hand, you're like me and want to hear as many opinions as possible before making your own decision, then you want the Third Ear guide.Classical Music: Third Ear: The Essential Listening Companion

Good Luck and Happy Listening!

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Flawed, but I am ADDICTED!, February 10, 2009

By 

R. Nadel "Opinion Above Knowledge!" (Boulder, CO, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music 2009 (Paperback)

The Penguin Guide has changed only slightly over the years. I am sitting here looking at my first Penguin Stereo Record Guide from 1975 in hard back (small format, though). Back then I was wrapping up post-grad college, working in a large music store as Classical buyer, and the Guide was unquestionably the most respected and authoritative summary of classical music records that could be held in one hand. 1114 pages, quaintly including reviews of the Beatles' albums (influenced perhaps by Deryck Cooke?) comparing them to Stockhausen and Boulez and furthermore identifying George Martin as their Walter Legge (for the younger set, Legge was something of a genius classical/opera producer for EMI particularly after the war).

It's true the Penguin Guide is flawed, that editorial gaffs persist, like non sequitur junk DNA accumulating over the evolutionary millennia. It is true that the rating system is ambiguous and redundant on its face. It's true that a few recordings are reviewed in the body text without their names appearing in the recordings list for a particular piece. It's true that some albums listed are out of print and other, worthy titles in print do not appear anywhere. It's true that it is not comprehensive. But all those weaknesses taken together amount to little more than annoyance, unless you really expect a single volume can satisfy the range of classical music consumers from novice to devoted long hair music buffs.

It is still the most readable, fun, unputdownable single volume reference Guide. From the first, this Guide has given me a developing vocabulary in what differentiates classical music performances and recordings. It has shown me titles I would never have known about. The consistency of their approach allows me to compare my tastes to theirs, and adjust accordingly.

But something important is changing, I think.

My copy of this latest volume has over 1550 pages in large format and bears the telling subtitle "The Perfect Guide to Building Your Classical Collection". The subtitle has changed several times from no subtitle, to "The Guide to Excellence in Recorded Classical Music", to "The Key Classical Recordings on CD, DVD, & SACD", and now "The Perfect Guide to Building...". These volumes are essentially the same in content and style yet the subtitles changed. Why?

Put simply, the world around them has changed dramatically. The number of boutique labels is growing, adding to the mass of music recorded from the 50s/60s through the 90s. The number of excellent artists seems larger than ever. Sampling and rent-before-you-buy services make direct comparisons possible in a way we didn't have before the Web. Furthermore, if you are an experienced listener like me, you have thousands of vinyl and CD titles each. It is hard enough to keep track of my own music using a relational database, let alone the thousands of new recordings each year. When I first began to collect seriously, no one had listened to as much music as they had. Most of us who have been listening for years cannot now get what we want from a single volume anymore. We need the combination of single volume baseline reference, plus classical music periodicals (I get the BBC's Music magazine and they have I don't know how many reviews each month), PLUS online resources. Amidst the volume of classical music information, there is no single place I can go; I still like my single volume Penguin as a starting place for several reviews that I can assess, and then I can move out from there to other resources.

I don't know about the future, however. With Darwinian pressures exerted by the changing environment and an aging, shrinking, classical consumer population, plus new innovations from the Web, our Penguin will need to adapt and evolve in the face of the public's Natural Selection choices lest it find itself, like such birds as the moa, dodo, and passenger pigeon, on the verge of extinction.

32 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Inability to update?, January 9, 2009

By 

AndrewCF "Andy" (Brockton, MA USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music 2009 (Paperback)

The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music 2008
Another disappointing effort. The book is still rife with recordings that have been out of print for several years. The label Jecklin, for example, no longer exists, but the book reviews all of the classic Frank Martin recordings as if they were still available. The typos from the 2008 edition were carried over. No review of the Neruda Songs by Lieberson. Letters to the editor go unanswered. Very sad.