The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs and DVDs 2002/2003 (Penguin Reference Books) (Paperback)

Better than that, however, they eschew the deplorable tendency to look for "winners".

Many years ago, a conductor at the CBSO warned me that the trouble with record music was the tendency to think that the recording you had bought of, say, Brahms Fourth Symphony was the only way it could be played, the only way it could sound.

Such an attitude is the death of classical music: the greater the work, the MORE it is open to variations in interpretation, underscoring - if you will pardon the pun, the role of the conductor in moulding a particular view of the score.

And to enjoy the luxury of buying more than one recording of a great work is something to treasure.

These reviewers are enormously helpful; indeed over the years the work has rightly attained "biblical" status.

The "star" system is used well, but it is always essential to read their comments. Here again, they get the highest possible marks. Not only are their comments astute, they have also honed the skill of brevity.

Quite simply, if you are interested in classical music, this is a Must Buy!

Two small niggles deprive the book of the fifth star. The first, a longstanding niggle, is the usual absence of systematic confirmation of whether librettos and sung texts and translations are included with CDs. The second, new, niggle relates to subtitling information on DVDs. Almost all DVDs (except the budget "Un palco alla Scala" series by Elleu, which isn't in the guide yet anyway) include English subtitles, but original language subtitles are unpredictable - DG always give viewers with a little French or Italian the original language subtitle option, but DG's sister companies Decca and Philips refuse to. TDK and Arthaus vary from DVD to DVD. This is the sort of information where a symbol in the next Penguin Classical CD and DVD guide would help.

But, as said, those are small niggles. This is still the standard. Fix those two niggles and the next edition deserves a Rosette!

This Yearbook also contains reviews of orchestral and instrumental collections, and vocal/instrumental discs. There are also now reviews of Classical DVD's, a medium very suitable for opera, maybe not so much for concerts.

There are no articles on the composers themselves, just the discs. Established collectors will always value the Penguin Guides, and I for one would never be without them. However, I think newcomers are now better served by the Rough Guide to Classical Music...but that's another story.