Product Description

This book has remained the best and most successful guide to classical music for over 40 years. Fully revised by its team of eminent authors and written with wit and passion, "The Penguin Guide" offers reviews of all the latest releases as well as the finest established recordings; the greatest historic performances; the major period instrument recordings; an in-depth survey of the best of the budget-priced CDs; and, a core collection of 100 handpicked CDs that every serious classical music fan should own. Now published annually for the first time, this book is essential reading. "Indispensable, illuminating and comprehensive" - "The Times".

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #472897 in Books
• Published on: 2007-10-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 1568 pages

Review
This is the bible for the discriminating record collector.
"The Sunday Telegraph," London
Indispensable, illuminating and comprehensive.
"The Times," London
Now more valuable than ever to any serious collector of classical music.
"The Wall Street Journal"

About the Author
Ivan March is a well-known lecturer, journalist and writer in the world of recorded music. He lives in London, SW6. Edward Greenfield was for forty years on the staff of the Guardian and is a regular BBC broadcaster. He lives in London, E1. Robert Layton is a journalist and broadcaster. He lives in London, NW6.

Customer Reviews

3.5 stars -- continued slippage but good news for DVD fans
I've owned the Penguin Guide continuously since 1984 and the 2008 version is about the tenth edition I've purchased. I've seen this guide go from having no competition to having some competition to being a model to be copied by the likes of the All Music Guide, Rough Guide to Classical Music, Third Ear Classical Music and the annual compendium of reviews Gramophone magazine puts together and markets under the moniker Gramophone Classical Music Guide 2008 (AKA Classical Good CD, DVD, & Download Guide)

In all this time, no other guide has continuously challenged the Penguin Guide's leadership in relating what's new and different in the universe of recorded classical music. Third Ear came closest but published only one edition in 2000. Today, the Penguin Guide is still the best at what it does but, based on my review of the 2008 edition, it is changing its ways and is slipping a bit behind the classical music industry.

I say it is slipping because the 2008 edition is hardly representative of the greatest recordings that have been issued since the last edition was published in 2005. Two significant historical events occurred in 2006 -- the Shostakovich centenary and the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth. Both birthdays generated scores of new recordings, probably more for Shostakovich than in any single year ever before. They covered one of these celebrations pretty well in their pages but didn't do so well in the other.

The new Penguin Guide did best representing the reams of new Shostakovich recordings that came out that year. The 2008 tome includes discussion on the super audio cycle of symphonies from Kitaenko on Capriccio, the excellent DVD "Shostakovich vs. Stalin: The War Symphonies", and lists as its No. 1 version of the "Leningrad" symphony the super audio version by Hofman and the Beethoven Orchestra of Bonn on MGD. This even though it did not include a single listing of the series of Shostakovich symphonies being delivered by Caetani and the Verdi Orchestra of Milan.

They didn't cover the ground on Mozart's birthday so well, however. I looked for listings of my two favorite Mozart CDs released in 2006 -- Paul McCreesh's dynamic and dramatic reading of the Great C Minor Mass on Archiv and Peter Neumann's SACD recording of the Missa Solemnis and Vesperae Solennes on MGD -- and neither were included. The Penguin Guide listed two of Neumann's older Mozart choral recordings but missed the newer super audio job that was hailed by critics worldwide. I was astonished to find only three listings of CDs of the C Minor Mass and an addiitional one on CD. Surely this masterwork deserves greater representation than the inadequate listing of performances by Karajan, Gardiner and Herreweghe!

In fact, the more I looked, the more I found great recordings issued between guides not represented. To offer a short list, here are a few:

-- No new collections of either Bach's 6 Partitas for keybard or complete recordings of Beethoven's 32 Piano Sonatas even though Seattle professor Craig Sheppard recorded both to much critical accalim during the period.

-- No listing of Jos von Immerseel's recording of Ravel's Bolero, Concerto for the Left Hand, Rhapsodie Espanol, Pavane pour unde infante defunte and La Valse that BBC Music Magazine designated its album of the year for 2006.

-- No listing of the Abbado-Berlin Philharmonic reading of the Mahler Symphony No. 6 that Gramophone called its recording of the year for 2006.

-- No listing of the Rattle-Berlin Philharmonic recording of Gustav Holst's "The Planets" and four other insterstellar pieces of music that raised some eyebrows. It wasn't the greatest recording of the music but the Penguin Guide otherwise seems to find room to include every other recording from Englishman Simon Rattle.

The fact that the Penguin Guide is now more a collection of old favorites than ever before is most aptly demonstrated in the Mahler section. In the 11 pages covering his 10 symphonies, I counted only 6 new recordings from the past edition and not one of them is really new -- they are all older recordings either seeing first light (Solit-Chicago Symphony 1 on Decca and Bernstein-Vienna Philharmonic 5 on DG) or re-recordings of older recordings (Hatink-Concertgebouw 8 on a PentaTone SACD issue). With a half-dozen Mahler cycles in progress the past few years, this seems short shrift indeed as a recommendable section.

Meanwhile, most of a decade removed from the Bach birthday in 2000, the 2008 Penguin Guide is still carrying every listing of the complete Bach cantata recordings by Harnoncourt-Leonhardt, Koopman, Suzuki and Gardiner -- twice! -- with notations for the Gardiner recordings on both Archiv and the Soli Deo Gloria series. To complete my list of what I perceive as debits in the new edition, the text is more difficult to read. The text size appears to be about the same (small) but italicized headers in much larger type (and a different text face) and boxes around what the book calls its "key" recordings more distracted than assisted me.

Some changes for 2008: The editors seem to have changed their concept a bit this time, too, by not listing every recording they talk about in text. In other words, their ongoing discussion may include recordings not listed in the headings, so keep reading to see if your favorite is there. The editors made another change -- the Penguin Guide now uses a 4-star rating system. It had always been a 3-star system until this edition. They do not address this in the text so I can't say why this happened.

I have concentrated on demerits but there are improvements in the new edition. The Penguin Guide caught a few recordings I thought might slip under its radar including a wonderful 2006 recording of Offenbach's Concerto Militaire by Pernoo and Minkowski. In addition to representative coverage of the Shostakovich year the new Penguin Guide has made a concerted effort to cover a much wider range of DVD this time, especially those for opera and sacred music. The Beethoven symphony section has nearly as many DVD as CD listings. They tend to list these in this way, always scrupulously listing the DVD director:

Wagner: Tristan und Isolde (complete; DVD version)
Wagner: Tristan und Isolde (complete: CD version)

It still has over 1,500 pages and lists most composers famous and not so famous. I think the bottom line is people that don't subscribe to critical review magazines or do not closely follow Internet review mechanisms, and look for one guide to cover the entire industry, will probably benefit by acquiring this book. Yet, perhaps the greatest demerit of this guide is that, if you don't record on a major label or on Naxos, you don't have much chance of being included in this book. For those of us that follow the industry closely, the new Penguin Guide demonstrates, more than ever before, its inability to keep up with what's going on with the hundreds of new recordings released every month.

The Guide has seen better days
Over the years, I have found the Penguin guide a useful reference for getting an idea of available recordings of a particular piece, and some kind of general idea of their respective merits. This latest edition, however, seems to have become too selective. Where earlier editions often seemed to list all serious contenders for a work, this one is much more limited, for instance listing no more than four recordings of Sacre du Printemps (including neither of my favourites, Chailly and MTT). For some works you may not find a listing at all (e.g., Zemlinsky's Seejungfrau). This is a pity, because this way the Penguin guide looses its main advantage over the Gramophone Good CD Guide, that has always been far more selective, and in my opinion is the more reliable source when it comes to aesthetic judgment. (E.g, the Penguin continues to list the inadequate and incomplete Kliegel as a serious recommendation for Kodaly's cello solo sonate, but doesn't bother to mention Claret or Wispelwey).

Also, recordings are listed that are no longer available (eg., the Abbado Gurrelieder).

The rating system has acquired several new features that will guarantee utter confusion. Three stars used to be the top, but now exceptional recordings can get four. But that isn't all, exceptional recordings can also still get the familiar rosette, and moreover can be qualified as a `key' recording, identified with a little key-symbol. What all this means is completely mysterious. There are four-star recordings with an without rosettes; three-star recordings with a rosette while four-star competition goes unrosetted; there are rosette-recordings that are key and others that aren't; and key recordings may be rated anything from two and a half to four stars. Strangely, too, for some works numerous key recordings are listed, which makes one wonder what makes them 'key'. It is nonsense to pretend music criticism is an exact science, and this fussy rating system is off the mark.

I wish the ample lay-out of headers and the boxes denoting key recordings had been dispensed with to allow more room for listing additional recordings.

For those wanting a general and extensive entrance point to the classical CD and DVD market, this guide will be useful nonetheless, and it has always been an interesting tome to thumb through, if only to check your own preferences against those of these self-styled musical gurus.

Extremely disappointing
I agree with the negative reviews posted here. I have been buying this guide regularly for decades, and look forward to each new issue avidly, despite the ever-lengthening trail of nonsensical statements that have survived cut-and-paste editing as recordings are added or (especially) deleted from the list. I can kind of forgive this particular widespread mess, as the task of editing such a huge volume with less than an army of editorial staff is truly daunting. Despite the ever-worsening series of little faults, it has always been the Gold Standard for serious collectors of classical recordings. But the latest edition has finally toppled over into the mud. For the first time there are fewer entries rather than more compared to the last full edition, and the ax has been wielded completely to several composers. Adios, Alberto Gerhard! The Guide has always been good about covering new recordings very promptly, but this time there are many, many important new issues that have not been included. The bulk is just as great as before, but that is because the space is used up with larger typeface and the introduction of superfluous boxes around chosen recordings. The plethora of distinguishing marks given to different recordings is almost impossible to parse and borders on the comical. Three stars for a fully recommended recording, three stars with a key for "key recordings", now FOUR stars for fully fully fully fully recommended recordings, and four stars with a rosette for, well, gosh, if everything else is so fully extra-special wonderful, these must be guaranteed to change your life. The evaluation process has degenerated into a form of hype. Since almost all recordings that previously received a less-than-three-star rating have been dropped, this leaves this as pretty much a Guide to Recommended Recordings. You might think it is not much of a loss to drop listings of less-recommended recordings, but it was always possible to develop an understanding of the well-marked biases and limitations of the three editors by seeing which kinds of interpretations they tended to give lower ratings, and therefore to compensate for the basic dullness and correctness of their very British critical bias. This strategy is no longer available for readers.

So, after many, many years of excitedly snapping up each new edition, I will probably not be buying any more Penguin Guides to Classical Music. (The sad demise of one of the two editors of the Penguin Guide to Jazz probably puts an end to that wonderful publication as well.) I am seriously disappointed, and, considering the hundreds of hours I have spent with the various editions of this publication, I actually feel I have lost a small corner of my life that has given me a lot of pleasure.

It may be that the Guide is still useful to newer collectors, but it a sad comedown from its own established level.