The Gramophone Classical Music Guide 2010 Paperback – September 20, 2009

It's a relative issue. Penguin is clearly better than Gramophone, largely for reasons so well documented here by other reviewers. Itoffers many more choices than Gramophone, and does so in a nicely organized way. I consult my 2009 Penguin Guide virtually everyday; it's incredibly informative and to-the-point. - I paid $4.05 (including shipping) for a VG copy of this 2010 Gramophone Guide; it issurely worth more. I don't think it deserves the heavy-handed negation of some of these reviews. If you are a music lover, you shouldhave it, but primarily as a supplement to the Penguin. Even though it lacks the coverage that Penguin has, it is still a valuable resource,at times treating a given area in more depth than Penguin - and is fun to read. While I don't let either guide do my thinking for me, I amgrateful to be able to consult them both. - If it's a question of one or the other, choose the Penguin.

I must back up the reviews of the Gramophone reviews by Gordon and VanDeSande. For my purposes this book is next to useless. Penguin is much better and Third Ear is by far the best. As VanDeSande emphasizes, Gramophone considers only a small number of available recordings. And it's not clear how they select; they include performances that they rate low, middling and high. To match their two competitors it would have been better to considerably shorten many of their long reviews and bring to bear considerably more performances, at least for the basic repertoire, the essential canon. Their British bias is present, though not as pronounced as Penguin. Like Penguin, they are enthralled with 'period' performances. I am not. Going right to my (and a lot of other people's) favorites, Beethoven symphonies, they make no mention of Cluytens (BPO/'50's), Bernstein (NYPO/'60's; VPO/'70's), Muti (PO/'80's) or Barenboim (Berlin Staatskapelle/'90's)... and a great number of other performances that are highly regarded by many critics world wide. They do consider Karajan and Furtwangler and Toscanini, but how can anyone talk of performances of Beethoven symphonies and not even mention Bernstein. Maybe if you're British.

At 1434 pages, this year's Gramophone guide is 120 pages longer than the current edition of the Penguin guide, and those extra pages have been put to excellent use. Flip to the back of the Gramophone guide and you'll find two indexes: one of works by composer, another of featured performers. These alone put the index-free (and poorly arranged) Penguin guide to shame, but as if that wasn't enough, I've found disc reviews and mini-biographies in Gramophone for composers Penguin doesn't even list: Rebel, Pandolfi, and Joseph Marx, for example. (For the record, Penguin scores with Onslow; both fail to list Platti or the Bendas.) There are fifty pages of music anthology reviews, arranged by conductors, instrumental soloists, ensembles, and singers, and six pages of web listings for classical music downloads and podcasts.More important than these extras is the quality of the reviews, and Gramophone's critics bring a literary sensibility and a quality of thought to their reviews that Penguin doesn't approach. While Penguin reviews veer towards useless generalizations, Gramophone reviews are both more explicit and more imaginative. Here's Penguin on the AAM/Andrew Manze recording of Geminiani's op.6 Concerti Grossi (which Penguin lists, erroneously, as opus 5): "Allegros are full of vigour (and bravura) while the exquisite delicacy of the solo contribution to slow movements makes the strongest possible case for authenticity in this music." Yawn.Now here's Gramophone on the same recording: "Listen to the Academy of Ancient Music lustily laying into the thick chords in the final movement of Concerto No.4, dragging back the tempo and then charging off again...Manze is free with his embellishments, throwing in double stops, blue notes, and all manner of flourishes with an abandon that won't be to everyone's taste, but which contributes hugely to the enthusiastic tenor of the music making as a whole. The orchestra is in fine form, offering a full sound whose occasional slight rawness is no bad thing in performances of such strength, directness and honesty." Unlike the Penguin guide, the Gramophone guide will tell you WHY the music, as well as the performance, is worth listening to in the first place.Reading Gramophone reviews is a small literary pleasure in its own right. Where else will you read of "our habitual expectation of orchestral colour in Tchaikovsky, a situation that doesn't really affect our appreciation of the early, almost Schubertian D major Quartet (the one with the Andante cantabile that moved Tolstoy to tears)"? Where else will you find Glenn Gould's 1955 Goldberg Variations wittily summarized as "a marvellously designed and executed building, inhabited only by a caretaker"?Does Gramophone cover absolutely every classical CD and download in existence? Of course not. It covers more of them than Penguin, though, and in considerably more thoughtful prose and descriptive detail.

Very good

Si nos artistes n'ont pas toujours le succès et la notoriété qu'ils méritent dans notre pays, et sont souvent obligés de s'expatrier pour être reconnus,on ne peut en dire autant des anglais.Un exemple parmi d'autres: sur huit références citées par Gramophone pour les neuf symphonies de Beethoven, quatre sont britanniques, à savoir Norrington,Gardiner,Rattle et enfin Mackerras.Pour les sonates Paul Lewis est également une référence, de même que Richard Goode pour les concertos pour piano,Stephen Hough pour ceux de Brahms alors par exemple qu'un artiste de la dimension d'Arrau n'est même pas cité une seule fois et que Serkin est à peine évoqué.Bref, vous l'avez compris,pour Gramophone,les grands artistes classiques sont de préférence brtanniques ou résidents anglais et cette édition monumentale quant à son volume n'apporte pas grand chose, sinon une bonne dose de chauvinisme.Pour moi, c'est une déception et je souhaite que Diapason nous propose enfin une mise à jour de son dictionnaire dont la dernière édition remonte à 1991.

リヒターのマタイはエントリーすらされていない。カルミナ・ブラーナはヨッフムよりもオルソップが上！？　日本の雑誌や名盤本の信奉者が見れば卒倒するかもしれない。とはいえ、本書で評価の高いナクソス、ＢＩＳ、シャンドスで活躍するアーティストの多くが在京オケに客演してそれなりの演奏を聴かしていたりするのだから結構説得力がある。

I have both Grammophone and Penguin 2010 guides and have noticed that so often they write the same thing almost exactly word for word for a recording. So who is copying who? It is true that to some extent a good recording is a matter of personal taste but many top recommendations are quite clearly dire performances, take Allessandrini's Brandenberg Concertos, Rattle's ill-conceived Mahler 5 (compared to Bernstein or Chailly) and Beethoven Symphonies as examples (Grammophone gets the Beethoven right with the Harnoncourt recommendation though). The snobbish omission from both guides of the Netrebko/Villazon film version of La Boheme is a crime (the recommended Teatro Madrid DVD is passionless and directed with no understanding of human emotion and behaviour). Grammophone have ommited Messiaen's Quartet For The End Of Time altogether. Is this because they have been criticised in previous editions for snobbishly omitting the popular DG version? And where is the classic set of Chopin's Nocturnes on RCA by Rubinstein? It's still available, but despite being commonly accepted as the best version doesn't even get an entry in either guidebook. Instead we get Pires's meaningless attempt as a top recommendation. All the way through both guides we hear Gardiner (better than Suzuki for Bach's cantatas as Grammophone imply?), Pinnock, Hewitt, Rattle British, British, British! Do they have classical music across the English Channel? Or is it because of course us Brits are best at everything of course, didn't you know? Not that the performers named are bad (though Rattle is extremely overated because the British are so practised in the arts of marketing, spin and media manipulation, having gotten most of the general population fixated on three-chord Anglo-Saxon guitar songs ever since marketing hit gold with radio, TV and the Beatles).There aren't really any other comprehensive recording guides and you do need these guides to find the best recordings, but don't trust them ultimately. Look online for reviews. Because it seems that although these two guides supposedly have different authors, they write a lot of the same stuff. and amongst many good recommendations have many recommendations that can only be influenced by racism and/or dodgy dealings going on, seeing they have the market cornered. Please buy a selection of recordings on Amazon 2nd hand, sell the bad ones, write reviews, and, unfortunately, though my soul cringes, you probably need both of these guidebooks, Penguin being a little more reliable and less snobbish and far more comprehensive.