Product Description

In his informed and indispensable guide, National Public Radio's Ted Libbey takes listeners by the hand through the classical repertory to build a music library. Now, five years after its original publication - with five years of new performances to consider, new releases to review. reissues to re-evaluate - Mr. Libbey has completely revised and updated the book. While sticking to the essential 300 works, there are now one-third new selections and reviews, and a 50% change in discography to keep all suggested CDs up-to-date. Berlioz. Vaughan Williams. Schubert and Schumann. Mozart after the Jupiter Symphony. Bach beyond the Brandenburg Concertos, opera after The Magic Flute - The NPR Guide will make every music lover's core collection complete.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20600 in Books
• Published on: 1999-09-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 536 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780761104872
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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From the Back Cover
Where Do You Go After Mozart's Jupiter? After Bach's Brandenburg Concertos? After Beethoven's Third?

In this informed and indispensable guide, now in a second edition featuring a hundred new recordings, National Public Radio's Ted Libbey takes you by the hand through the classical repertory and helps you build an essential CD collection. Not just another rating book, this is a foremost expert's thoughtful and entertaining appreciation--work by work, performer by performer, recording by recording--of the symphonies, concertos, chamber pieces, keyboard works, sacred works, and operas that belong in every music lover's library. It includes the core 20 works for starting out, recommendations especially suited for young listeners, and an appendix listing additional works, beyond those covered in the first edition, that the author feels most passionate about.

PRAISE FOR THE FIRST EDITION:
"I have been lost in this book for a week...Libbey('s) comparisons are wonders of lucidity, differentiation, and those 'open ears' Rostropovich spoke of." --Chicago Tribune

"An extensive guide and perfect companion to the basic classical repertory." --Digby Diehl, Playboy Magazine

About the Author
Ted Libbey is a commentator on NPR's "Performance Today", the features editor of The Schwann Opus, and a series producer for Time-Life Music, and was formerly music critic for The New York Times. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Samuel Barber

Adagio for Strings

On the programs of American symphony orchestras, the American composer whose music is most frequently encountered is not Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, or George Gershwin, but Samuel Barber (1910-1981). For many years, Barber's Adagio for Strings has been the most frequently performed concert work by an American composer. This intense, elegiac piece was originally the opening part of the second movement of Barber's String Quartet, Op. 11; the composer then scored it for string orchestra at the request of conductor Arturo Toscanini, who gave the first performance of the arrangement in 1938 with the NBC Symphony Orchestra. The music begins quietly with a feeling of subdued but deep sadness, builds to a searing climax of extreme poignancy, and subsides again into the stark, melancholy mood of its opening.

Though familiar from repeated playings (and from use in Oliver Stone's film Platoon), the Adagio for Strings remains one of the most moving and beautiful elegies ever conceived, an outstanding example of Barber's remarkable lyric gift.

Recommended Recordings

New York Philharmonic/Thomas Schippers.

Sony Classical "Masterworks Heritage" MHK 62837 [with other works by Barber, Menotti, Berg, and D'Indy]

Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra/Leonard Slatkin.

EMI CDC 49463 [with Overture to The School for Scandal, Essays Nos. 1-3 for Orchestra, and Medea's Meditation and Dance of Vengeance]

The most beautiful recording ever made of the Adagio for Strings is at last on CD, thoughtfully coupled with some of the other recordings the young Thomas Schippers made for Columbia Masterworks-of the music of Barber and others-between 1960 and 1965, at the start of his all-to-brief career. Although he was never on close personal terms with Barber, Schippers had the ability to put Barber's music across in just the right way, with the perfect blend of energy and lyricism, toughness and warmth, and, above all, with the feeling that its sentiment was real, but ineffably contained. The playing of the New York Philharmonic (in the Adagio, as well as in the Second Essay for orchestra, the Overture to The School for Scandal, Andromache's Farewell, and Medea's Dance of Vengeance) is aglow with inspiration, and the sound is exceptionally vivid, with a palpable sense of presence and space.

For the essential orchestral pieces of Barber, EMI's compilation with Slatkin and the Saint Louis Symphony is the best currently available. Slatkin's reading of the Adagio is beautifully built, exactly on the mark. The Essays-works of magnificent crafstmanship in which Barber unerringly balanced the sorrowful with the triumphant-are powerfully stated, and Medea's Meditation and Dance of Vengeance emerges as an orchestral tour de force. The recordings are full, spacious, superbly atmospheric.

Customer Reviews

Brilliant reviews on orchestral works and concertos
The NPR Guide to Building a Classical CD Collection is a good start but, it has its limitations. Ted Libbey gave himself a daunting task in putting this guide together. He did an excellent job on the two chapters on orchestral works and concertos, which comprise about half the book. These chapters alone make this book worth the money. His commentary is concise without losing important detail. The reasons that he selected the recommended recordings are clearly laid out. He gives the audiophile a genuine opportunity to understand what is good in a specific recording and what is missing. In many cases he provides more than one choice and explains the differences between the recordings. Based on his commentary, I am obsessively trying to find the Elan recording of Santiago Rodriguez playing Prokofiev’s Piano Concerto No. 3.

As the guide progresses, however, the author seems to lose interest. His chapter on chamber music is adequate. Then, he zips through solo keyboard works and sacred music. By the time he gets to the last chapter on Opera he has given up. It is ridiculously short. The entire subject is covered in 60 pages! It is not well edited. At one point he states that Leontyne Price is the “great Aida of our time”; then he does not mention her recording of this Verdi masterpiece. His recommendation of Mirella Freni’s Aida is a surprise. It is in this chapter that the author has decided not to give any reasons for his recommendations. And so, we are left puzzled. What is wrong with Leontyne Price’s Aida? All of Marilyn Horne’s opera recordings are overlooked. He correctly lists the brilliant Victoria de los Angeles and Jussi Bjorling recording of La Boheme, but fails to note that this is a mono recording.

Perhaps Ted Libbey should have co authored this book with someone interested in vocal music, or represented this as the essential guide to orchestral works and concertos. It is certainly worth having. But the true classical CD collector will need other guides for help in finding those special vocal and solo instrument recordings. I recommend this with some reservation.

Deeply flawed but great
I love this book. It has been the sole guide my wife and I have used to flesh out our collection of art music recordings for close to a year now. However the book has major problems.

While everyone certainly has their favorite composers and genres of music, the amount of space dedicated to Jean Sibelius defies all logic. While he was certainly great and wrote much better stuff than I could ever write, the amount of space devoted toward this relatively obscure composer is indefensible in light of all the composers left out, even in his 2nd list of 350 in the back. No works by Telemann, C.P.E. Bach, Corelli, Poulenc, Satie, or Couperin (what does he have against the French?).

What is even more glaring is the neglect some of the greatest composers of all time recieve. Libby spotlights Handel as a "major maestro" and then lists a paltry three of his works. They are his greatest to be sure, but if one is going to include him alongside Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, J.S. Bach and Haydn one needs to list more than three pieces. Even worse is poor Schubert who, not only unlucky enough to be overshadowed by Beethoven his whole life, now must be grossly under represented here and not even given "major maestro" status. His lieder are inexplicably lumped in with the chamber music vividly illustrating Libby's neglect of vocal and choral music. That none of Vivaldi's highly influencial sacred music is not included is also a crime. He seems lucky to get the Four Seasons in.

That, more than Libby's love for Sibelius, is the greatest flaw of this book. Choral and vocal music are given short shrift time and time again as shown by the tiny chapters on opera and sacred music and the lack of any discussion of secular non-operatic music or solo vocal sacred works (Schubert gets it again).

I don't want to give the impression that I don't like this book. I love it. There is really nothing else out there like it and Libby's writing is easy to understand, informative and even entertaining (especially in the margins)! This book could be greatly impoved however. I would recommend using it in conjunction with the reviews on Amazon (taken with a grain of salt) or with some other source like your local classical radio station (if you have one).

Despite its flaws, buy it!

A very helpful reference with interesting commentary.
This is an excellent guide for "Building a Classical CD Collection".

The choices of selections and specific recordings, and the organization, writing, and extras are all first rate.
The book is divided into six sections based on types of music (not era's or composers). Although the first section is 200
pages, many of the composers are introduced there so the book is reasonably balanced.

A typical four pages consists of a bio on the composer (adding a real sense of history), a description of a selection, then
a few performances with commentary on
each recording as well.

The author's picks include many from the Berlin and Vienna orchestras, and several from London, Montreal, Chicago,
New York, Boston, Cleveland, Amsterdam and Columbia. He chose Karajan recordings, as well as Bernstien, Dutoit,
Colin Davis, Gardiner, Previn, Walter, Szell, and Marriner. Performers mentioned include Rubinstien, Ashkenazy,
Pearlman, Perahia, Mutter, and Schiff.

There are also plenty of interesting short stories and pictures about composers, conductors, orchestras, and performers
added in the generous margins. Another helpful section placed at the end, gives suggestions for: beginning a collection,
teenagers, special occasions, and other favorites of the author. After this, there is a helpful index of composers and
performers.
If you don't like having only a few recommendations for each work, getting a Penguin or Gramophone guide may
help. And of course: **read the reviews at Amazon.com!**

The book covers most of the "essential works" extremely well, but with 350 selections, it seems that a few other works
could have been included:
Vivaldi concertos, Sibelius Finlandia and no.1, Rachmaninov piano no.3, Bruckner no.4, Handel concerto grossi,
Schubert no.5 and string quartet no.14, Ravel La Valse, Mendelssohn no.3, more Schumann, Gershwin piano concerto
in F, Schoenberg Moonstruck Pierrotierrot, and the Mahler eighth.

Note to the author and publisher: I would welcome updates every five? years or so, to keep up with all of the new
recordings.