Best Classical Music Listening Guide

[vandermolen]

The Music web sends me reviews every week and is a great research base. The American Third Ear Guide is my favourite book but very out of date. The Penguin Guide is useful as is the Gramophone one but there are lots of gaps.

[eyeresist]

The Music web sends me reviews every week and is a great research base. The American Third Ear Guide is my favourite book but very out of date. The Penguin Guide is useful as is the Gramophone one but there are lots of gaps.

I have the Penguin guide 2005/06 plus the yearbook 2006/07. Also the penguin dictionary of classical music (title?). I found all these new in a bargain store, and so didn't break the bank.

Lately I've found myself perusing the Classical Music Listener's Companion ("Third ear") online at Google.books, and have finally caved in and ordered a copy. I like the way they organise reviews into an overview of performances, as opposed to the Penguin's reviews of individual CDs. Also, I found my opinions seem to coincide with the Companion's writers, on Bruckner and Dvorak at least. If only there was a more up-to-date version!

[Renfield]

After I'd gotten acquainted to the first batch of about twenty CDs I bought of various composers, having lived with the music for about two years, my "bible" for this purpose has been the 2007 version of this:




That's what I used to put together the core of my actual collection, and I have not regretted it.

Following that, I spent some time absorbing recommendations and opinions from this forum, then I took a few months' break and started digging up further recordings on my own (based on my often-triumphantly-successful hunches), and then I bought this:



Cue a prompt "uggghhh" when I realised that those recordings it recommends outside the Gramophone "Good Book" I'd either bought in my hunch-driven "safari" of the past few months, or they're things like - since he's been so discussed recently - Solti's CSO recordings, which are not bad, but are more often than not very far from my taste.

I don't know, it could be just me that found that book so average; but I was tempted to give it away when I opened the Gramophone book over something, and was instantly reminded what a true "top reference" book reads like.

Although let me note that the Penguin book mostly pales in comparison to the Gramophone book in my view: on its own it's not bad. Hence my mentioning it in this thread as another potentially useful reference.

But if you build a library based on that, you'll be missing out on a lot of superb recordings. It doesn't even list the Lucerne 9th!


So all in all - and particularly given the British bias of both publications that you need actual listening experience to decode properly (in my opinion, that is) - I suggest that a beginner first uses their ear, then uses a good reference book (see: Gramophone, do not see: Penguin ), then maybe expands to a second one and/or this forum.

This forum is useful, but it's not necessarily the best idea for someone who wants to get into something entirely new, due to the fact that you can't easily compare your view against "the recommendation", when the latter isn't one; much less if they're dozens.

[Que]

But if you build a library based on that, you'll be missing out on a lot of superb recordings. It doesn't even list the Lucerne 9th!

Renfield, I agree - the Penguin Guide is a waste of time. It used to better BTW.

The absence of the great Lucerne IXth is due to their policy to remove all traces of a recording on the moment it goes out-of-print. In this day and age - who cares? I buy OP recordings all the time!

I don't use recording guides any more. Like you, with some experience in the style of individual performers and developed ideas about what I seek in particular composers - an educated guess delivers the best result. And this forum of course!

Q

[MN Dave]

The American Third Ear Guide is my favourite book but very out of date.