Rating: 
Summary: Awe-inspiring!
Review: Amazing amount of information candidly expressed. Entries on Zappa and Berg way above average in summarizing extraordinary careers with keen insight. Daunting task to contemplate accomplishing; deserves a Pulitzer! Excellent reference for beginner or professional.
Rating: 
Summary: Very lop-sided. but worth having...
Review: Among the contributors to this book, it is clear there was no-one with any significant interest in, or knowledge of Bruckner's music. He gets one and a half pages. Even Miaskovsky gets more than that, whilst Arnold Bax takes up more than twice the space! Mahler has no fewer than 23 pages!! That aside The book does provide a refreshing alternative to but not replacement for the Penguin guide. I agree with earlier reviewers in that it doesn't have the Colin Davis / Simon Rattle bias of Penguin nor that book's obsession with Karajan. I also agree about the glaring omissions, like any mention of the Gilels/Reiner Brahms second or the Leinsdorf Mahler three whilst commending the less good fifth and sixth. The Mravinsky Sibelius seven is omitted despite praising most of his other recordings. No mention either of the classic Cluytens Shostakovich eleven.I was also dismayed by the cursory treatment of Rachmaninov's symphonies and denigration of Ormandy's set, number one of which is the best ever recorded. There are also errors like getting the conductor wrong in the Heifetz Elgar concerto ( Wallenstein instead of Sargent ), but despite all this I like the freely discursive style that economically mentions and compares a variety of recordings in juxtaposition rather than giving a separate paragraph to each as in Penguin, many of which haven't been updated in over twenty years ! I also like the frequent references to historical recordings to look out for even if they aren't currently available. To sum up I'd say it's fun to read in spite of being occasionally infuriating!
Rating:
Summary: Classical Music Third Ear
Review: An outstanding achievement. I've always appreciated the Penguin and Gramophone guides, but this book beats them, hands down. I enjoy the no-nonsense, irreverant tone. The various writers call it the way they see it, and I don't pick up the industry-commercial bias that I sometimes do with Penguin and Gramophone. I'm impressed that this book still lists the LaserLight Mozart CDs by Vegh and the Salzburg Camerata Academica that are such fantastic bargains. The writers also pull no punches when it comes to Naxos, whereas Penguin and Gramophone tend to gush from time to time: Wordsworth's Mozart is criticized while Wit's Tchaikovsky is praised--quite a revelation. Added bonus: the listing of quality Christmas and Noel music in the back section chapters. I will keep turning to this book in the months ahead ... I hope they do Rock and Jazz in a similar fashion, soon.
Rating:
Summary: Better than Penguin, Are You
Review: At last, a comprehensive classical CD reference work that outdoes the Penguin, long my mainstay to guide one through the thickets of building a CD collection.
Physically--larger pages, white paper, easier to read, smaller type; table of contents and index, lacking in Penguin; Authors: a slate of 54 writers, mostly American, some music journalists (the Penguin staff is largely British professional musicians and reviewers) and many enthiasts, and top names like Harold C. Schonberg; Structure: short introductory essays on the composers and major pieces; more performances included and rated, including deleted ones; reviews flow in a standard paragraph format, rather than having discography information at the head of each collection of performances; easier to find a single work in the haystack. There is no discernable American or British bias, but it does omit, for example, both Daniel and Sidney Jones. Best would be to buy BOTH as happy complements to each other. Definitely better than the Gramphone annual.
Rating:
Summary: Bo in Bellevue
Review: I am a relatively new classical music enthusiast and my first puchase was the Penguin Guide. While the Penguin guide is certainly thorough and covers a vast amount of CDs, that is at the same time its weakness. I found it overwhelming. The Third Ear is a great complement to the Penguin guide because it provides you with more in the way of bios of the great composers and information on their great works before it compares the available CDs. This may not be important to the longtime clasical enthusiast, but for a neophyte like me it is just the thing to assist me in my appreciation of the music. Its strength is that as the title says, it is a "Listening Companion" and not merely a buyer's guide.
Rating:
Summary: A great primer for the classical newcomer
Review: I am a relatively new classical music enthusiast and my first puchase was the Penguin Guide. While the Penguin guide is certainly thorough and covers a vast amount of CDs, that is at the same time its weakness. I found it overwhelming. The Third Ear is a great complement to the Penguin guide because it provides you with more in the way of bios of the great composers and information on their great works before it compares the available CDs. This may not be important to the longtime clasical enthusiast, but for a neophyte like me it is just the thing to assist me in my appreciation of the music. Its strength is that as the title says, it is a "Listening Companion" and not merely a buyer's guide.
Rating:
Summary: Very Useful, even Better than the Penguin Guide!
Review: I am an owner and very frequent user of Gramophone and Penguin Classical Music guidebooks, and also regularly consult those written by American critics Libbey and Svejda.I just recently discovered this book, and have found it to be a very useful supplement to my existing library of reviews. The reviews seem to be independent of any blatant pro-British or pro-American bias (always beware of national chauvinism when reading classical music reviews!). What I particularly like is that the book tends to include ALL major recordings of a particular piece, even if such recordings are presently out-of-print or unavailable at a retail outlet. This increases the life of the book beyond the vagaries of the current cd retail shelf-space. Also, while there is a good degree of consensus about classic recordings between this book and other cd guidebooks, this book has turned me on to some wonderful cd's that otherwise I don't think I would ever have found out about--and that's the best argument for purchasing it, right?
Rating: 
Summary: Refreshing alternative view
Review: I just got this book. It offers a refreshing alternative view to Gramophone and the Penguin Guide. It is far more pungently and racily written. However, the section on Bruckner fails to mention Gunter Wand's recordings. I am no Bruckner specialist, however it is well known that Wand is considered to be one of the great Bruckner conductors of the 20th century, so the omission is curious and odd to say the least. Similarly, the person reviewing recent Beethoven cycles is effusive about Barenboim and dismissive of Abbado. I think both are valid alternative views. The sheer transparency of Abbado's textures and his elegant phrasing are a joy to me atleast. The Penguin on the other hand, has the reverse view. What this goes to show is that beyond a point it is a matter of personal taste. The only thing needed is that the reviewer makes explicit his reasons for his conclusion. On this, the critics in this book cannot be faulted. However, this is a welcome antidote to the biases of British critics.
Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable reading but questionable information!
Review: I recently bought this book from Amazon (along with the newest edition of the Penguin Guide).
I found that it is certainly quite an enjoyable book to read, however I found it a bit biased and I really missed some recordings that I expected to be covered. I think that it is a bit strange that some recordings that are top rated both by the Penguin and Gramophone guides aren't even mentioned here! So, however enjoyable this book might be I still prefer the recomendations of the british CD guides! Reading some of the previous reviews of this book I noticed someone complaining about the authors of this book not covering Bruckner's music with the same depth as they did Handel's vocal music. I fully agree, however it was not the number of pages given to Handel's music what amazed me. What really amazed me was the extremely extensive and detailed coverage that Gershwin's handful of orchestral works got, especially when Bruckner's music is so briefly covered! To me this is a clear example of this book being quite biased!
One other problem is that the coverage of the works of each composer isn't always presented in the same manner, and that makes this book a bit more confusing and difficult to use as a true guide.
I recommend this book only as a complement (quite inferior) to the Gramophone and/or Penguin guides.
Rating:
Summary: Most enjoyable
Review: I return to this book three times as often as The Penguin Guide because it usually makes for more interesting reading and seems to offer more substance in the reviewers' comments regarding individual performances. Though, of course, we're dealing frequently with personal biases and favorites, I don't really detect the sort of ethnocentric tendency that fairly commonly characterizes the exclusively British Penguin Guide. For example, by my perception, the persistent overratedness of conductors like Colin Davis. However, I do have a few complaints about the Morin edited work here under consideration. The ONE--yes--ONE page given to Bruckner is unconscionable. Almost equally absurd are the thirty pages given to the vocal music of Handel. And, I'm not at all pleased with the sometimes thin treatment and occasional tacky comments given by the reviewer of Brahms' big works. I must say, though, that while I'm not a particularly great fan of Beethoven, that composer is given a terribly fascinating and probing analysis concerning comparative interpretations. There are also some very fine and ample considerations given to other composers like Mahler and Tchaikovsky, to name a few. I say go for it ! It's well worth its price.
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