Gramophone Classical Good Cd Guide 2004 (Gramophone Classical Good Cd Guide, 2004)

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Summary: Quirky and difficult to use
Review: As others here have noted, the reviews in the Good CD Guide are gossipy and tainted by a British bias. They can also be annoyingly repetitive; sometimes every review of a piece will include general comments about the piece, in addition to the review of the recording itself. As a consequence, perhaps, surprisingly few recordings are actually reviewed, despite the size of the book. Also worth noting is that the book is printed on cheap, rough paper, the text is printed too close to the spine, and the book will not lay flat -- all in contrast to the Penguin Guide.

If you're seeking an antidote to the Penguide Guide, I would suggest www.klassik-heute.com or www.classicstoday.com, rather than another printed guide.

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Summary: why?
Review: for the 3rd year in a row they included the mistake of falstaff appearing twice in its great recordings list...can someone tell me how this could happen

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Summary: Alternative
Review: Go for the Penguin Guide, it is more comprehensive than this. I am sure you will appreciate and enjoy reading it as much as I do.
Trust me, this is only suitable and appropriate if you are already very well informed on the classical recording industry. The editor only provide a list of the recordings to their preference, unlike Penguin Guide where it give many alternatives for consideration. If you don't believe me, go to the book shop and take a look and make a comparison between these 2 books, before you commit a purchase. I read the 2003 edition, and it is a great disappointment. I will not buy again, Penguin Guide is cheaper and better!

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Summary: Confusing for the beginner; good guidance nonetheless
Review: I would first like to thank "sky" whose reviews here are really a fountain of knowledge for neophytes to classical music like myself.

Don't let the fact that Bose, hucksters of the most overpriced and poorly designed audio equipment foisted on a naive public, are sponsors of the Gramophone guide. Thankfully Gramophone reviewers are more competant at reviewing classical music than finding quality audio sponsors! The Grammophone Classical Good CD Guide is a good read but difficult for beginners to use.

If you're a beginner like myself, already have classical cds and you are interested in finding out whether it is referenced in the guide it is a bit of a chore if you don't know what kind of sub-genre your dealing with [choral, orchestral, instrumental, chamber etc; being a beginner I have some difficulty with classificaitons]. I spent the better part of an hour trying to find whether some cds I owned were a part of the guide. Terrible indexing. What is needed in the index is a list of players/artists with their cds.

Much better to use it as a guide to procure cds rather than read up on what you already own, which is it's real benefit. All in all it's an interesting read and I wish I'd have purchased it before any collections of classical cds.

Rating:
Summary: You Have to Make Allowances for the British Bias
Review: I've been a reader of Gramophone for many years and have learned, as have many non-Brits, to make allowances for the strong British bias in the opinions offered in the magazine. This carries over to the Good CD Guide. I don't have the newest one--the 2005 edition--and most likely won't buy it largely because I have this recent one, and more important, because although the opinions in the book are often well-reasoned, they tend to be, how shall I say, old-fogeyish. I'm a great believer in preserving and treasuring historic recordings, but surely good recordings (excepting British ones, of course) didn't dry up in, say, 1980.

I agree with a previous reviewer who indicated that the Penguin Guide (which is also British) is more helpful. It's easier to navigate, too.



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Summary: Here's how to find these recommended recordings:
Review: I've heard quite often that American readers have great difficulty finding the recordings that are recommended in the Gramophone and Penguin CD guides--primarily because these guides work form the catalog of CDs that are in print in the UK, but also because they recommend many CDs that must be imported into both the UK and US from Germany.

Here's one trick to finding many, many imported CDs in the Amazon database--the only way I know of, in fact. Specially imported classical CDs retain their original label: Philips, Decca, Deutsche (from Deutsche Grammophon), Classics for... (from Classics for Pleasure), Archiv, Eloquence, Teldec, Virgin, etc. By contract, CDs released domestically on these labels show up as Polygram, Universal, Elektra, etc.

So--if you go to the classical search page and type "Deutsche" in the label field and nothing else, you get about 400 or 500 results that are specially imported Deutsche Grammophon CDs. Likewise, if you search only for "Philips" or "Decca," you will be astounded by the results--hundreds of imported CDs on these labels that I don't think can be found any other way!

The peculiarity is that often these imported discs apparently have links and info for the performers, but if you search for this performer from the classical search page, these imported CDs still don't show up! Very strange... For example, searching for "Dumay" on the classical search page brings about 15-20 results, but clicking the "Dumay" link on an imported CD page brings about twice as many results! So the other trick to searching is to click on links for a performer, and don't rely only on searching for a performer. You almost always get significantly more results by clicking a link than by searching.

You can, of course, also find many--but not all!--of these CDs on the Amazon.co.uk site, which is just as easy as using Amazon.com, but often the price advantage is in Amazon.com's favor, so it can really pay off to sift through the extensive import search results.

Examples of CDs I've found these way are Andras Schiff's box sets of Schubert piano sonatas and Mozart piano concertos, the Bruggen box set of Haydn's Sturm/Paris/London symphonies, all of the Dumay/Pires chamber music recordings on DG, Brendel's 4-disc set of the Haydn piano sonatas, recently released Double Deccas of Bizet, Hindemith, Stravinsky, and Vivaldi, Dvorak piano quintets by Richter and the Borodin Quartet, the Bohm set of the Mozart symphonies, the Alban Berg set of the major late Mozart string quartets--all these recordings are very highly rated by either the Gramophone or Penguin guides, and I found all of them by sifting through the hard-to-find imports.

Finally, what I've sometimes done, and what other classical music-lovers can do is, after I've found one of these highly rated recordings, I use Amazon.com's recommendation feature to create links to this hard-to-find disc from other recordings of the piece.

Happy searching--and listening!!

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Summary: There is no "best" guide--you need as many as possible
Review: It's pointless to say that either the Gramophone Guide or the Penguin Guide is "better" than the other. The fact is that you need both, and a couple other points of reference also!

The Penguin Guide makes a pretense to completeness, but in fact I've found that many, many of my favorite recordings have NEVER been reviewed in the Penguin Guide--I found them through the Gramophone Guide. Just try looking in the ol' Penguin and finding Andras Schiff's Teldec recordings of the Haydn sonatas or the Schubert piano trios--you won't find them, because Penguin never reviewed them! Or how about Ensemble Explorations' recordings of the Vivaldi cello concertos on Harmonia Mundi--not in the Penguin! Or the recordings of the Leclair violin sonatas on the Astree label? the recent reissues of Corelli and Vivaldi by Europa Galante on the Tete-a-Tete label? the recordings of the Bach lute suites by Schmidt on the Naive label? the box set of Haydn symphonies conducted by Bruggen on the Philips label? the Peer Gynt suites conducted by Marriner on the Hanssler label? NONE of these recordings appear in the Penguin!

The fact is that you need BOTH the Penguin and the Gramophone Guides. You can then decide upon a recording by finding a critical consensus between the two. And use some other resources, like the Rough Guide, The Third Ear, Classicstoday.com, and the Record Shelf Guide. Read as many sources as possible to reach a sort of critical consensus, because believe me, the Penguin Guide has a bias that you too will unwittingly acquire if you rely solely upon it. The Penguin leans heavily toward Brit performers on Brit labels like Chandos and Hyperion. Admittedly, these labels have some outstanding recordings, but there's more out there, which the Gramophone Guide is more successful in realizing. Gramophone culls recommended recordings from a seemingly wider pool of artists, labels, and countries.

So you've been warned! If your goal is finding the most rewarding classical music recordings possible, then you really can't afford not to consult the Gramophone Guide. And by the way, I assume that everyone knows that the two main Penguin critics, Edward Greenfield and Robert Layton, both write for Gramophone and appear on its list of contributors, right? In fact, many Penguin reviews are word-for-word reprints of what originally appeared in Gramophone magazine!

[One final word about critical bias: the Penguin loves the Lindsay String Quartet, who are English and whom I abhor! How many people know that Robert Layton, the Penguin critic, wrote the CD liner notes to the Lindsay recording of the Schubert string quintet, to which the Penguin Guide gives a rossette? Beware of relying on one critical perspective that harbors hidden biases!!]

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Summary: the rumors are true
Review: It's true what many classical music fans have said about Gramophone's "British bias." They do tend to lean toward British performers and labels, and they often lavish praise on artists who don't quite measure up to the hype (Gramophone Magazine's recent article on Kathleen Ferrier comes to mind.) Also, their reviews tend to be very short, and the Guide, or at least the 2002 edition that I have, does not tell you who the reviewers are, leaving you unsure whose taste you agree with and whose you don't. However, with these caveats in mind, I have found a lot of great recordings by browsing through this book. Their ratings (zero, one, two or three stars) are consistent and they also tell you what price range the CD is in. Some recordings that they list (for example, Veronique Gens's CD of Handel cantatas) are difficult to find in the U.S.
In addition to this guide, I recommend checking out ClassicsToday.com and browsing through Fanfare magazine (longer reviews, more detail, less slick and gossipy than Gramophone).

[also, I agree with the reviewer below from Colorado - thumbs down on the Lindsay Quartet. All the British CD guides seem to love them, though.]

Rating:
Summary: Too many cooks spoil the soup
Review: The latest edition of the Gramophone Guide is a marked improvement over previous editions. The Guide now has a better rating system, and key recordings are better represented.

However, with over 50 contributors, there is somewhat of a lack of consistency in the ratings. Many recordings that have very favorable written reviews are rated one disc or no discs at all. Take Stephen Kovacevich's Grieg Piano Concerto, for instance. In the text, it is described as a "benchmark offering." But the rating is no discs out of three! This happens repeatedly in the Gramophone Guide. It is not clear how the ratings were arrived at (whether individual reviewers gave each disc a rating, or whether the editor simply tacked on ratings to each review). This makes the Gramophone Guide less useful than, say, the Penguin Guide, which, for whatever else you can say about it, is very consistent in its reviews and ratings.

Stick to the Penguin Guide if you agree with the opinions of its three editors, who together write all the reviews, making for a more consistent system of ratings. True, a British bias, but consistent ratings nonetheless.

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Summary: Here's how to find these recommended recordings (Part 2)----
Review: This is just a quick follow-up to my first review below about how to better search for classical recordings in the Amazon database.

I've just discovered that between 500-600 RCA imports can be found by typing "BMG" in the label field and then clicking search. So, for example, if you're looking for the Penguin "key" recording of Firkusny playing the Dvorak piano quintets/piano concerto on RCA, you must sift through the BMG search results. This disc is one of many RCA classics that has been reiussed only by BMG-France in its "Artistes & Repertoires" series, which is why they all appear only as imports. Similarly, Koussevitsky's performance of Prokofiev's symphonies 1 & 5 (one of Gramophone's 100 Great Recordings) is found among the BMG search results. Many Gunther Wand CDs (Beethoven, Brahms, Bruckner, Schubert) can be found this way as well.

Also, for whatever reason, most DG Galleria CDs can be found only by searching after typing "Archiv" in the label box. So, for example, if you're looking for the Chung/Zimerman disc of the Strauss/Respighi violin sonatas (Gramophone Award-winner), you must sift through the Archiv search results.

If you're not clued into the whole process of finding and searching for classical imports, then read my first review below. Otherwise, you'll never find many, many great recordings. Happy searching!