The Rough Guide to Classical Music [Paperback]

The previous review I think is a little harsh. The Rough Guides are just that: an approximate, fast entrance into classical music, doesn't claim to get it spot on. Composers are listed with a brief bio - I don't really want to read an indepth biography of even some of my favorite composers - and then some works are recommended. It's not meant to be exhaustive. It focuses on recordings that are readily available - well, anymore let's say, more available than others. It does not always list the best performance - those may be out of print and the title of best is often times quite contested. Music is rather like recommending color. You don't really know if you will like it until you experience it.

I have a very large collection but I love music and am interested to know what learned people think. So, I got it from the library and looked it over. The authors know music. It's been at least eight years since I bought one and well, this one seems updated enough to warrant a purchase again. Enough has changed.

If you are an American, North or South, you might prefer Jim Svejda's out of print guide, The Record Shelf, where he is the host and critic. Sadly, it is out of date. I'm hoping for a revision. I use many guides. Gramophone and Penguin Guides are written by much the same group of Brits who perfer things staid, proper, proportionate. That can get a little boring. And they almost always award an extra star in their ratings for British performers. Whoever the current conductor of the London Phil. is almost always "brilliant". I prefer a bit more fire, i.e. Leonard Bernstein to say Bernard Haitink - although I have many fine Haitink recordings.

The Rough Guide does not come out every year so they tend to take a longer look at what is in the catalogue. Penguin and Gramophone come out yearly and their ratings reflect not so much the best but the best of a narrower couple of years. Gramophone seems to have more reviewers. American Record Shelf seems to have more newspaper reviewers.

Are you looking for a guide to help you build or expand your classical music collection or are you looking for an education in the classical music in general or composer's lives and bios? Both are certainly worthy endeavors and the good news is there are excellent books to help you build your CD collection and get a music history education too. This publication aims to meet both these lofty goals yet it succeeds at neither.
If you want to learn about the composers then I say BRAVO to you. You are in for a most fascinating education but it won't be found within the pages of the Rough Guide either.

At the current moment, I don't have the time to write another in depth review but please allow me to steer you to some other books from the pages of which you can really learn: I'll do some broad categorizing:

For composers in general You should peruse at least these two books: "The Essential Canon of Classical Music" The Essential Canon of Classical Music by David Dubal and "The Lives of the Great Composers" The Lives of the Great Composers by Harold C. Schonberg.

Want in depth composer and musician specific bios? Here's a sampling of some real gems:

J.S. Bach: "The New Bach Reader: A Life of Johann Sebastian Bach in Letters and Documents" The New Bach Reader: A Life of Johann Sebastian Bach in Letters and Documents by Arther Mendel, revised and expanded by Christoph Wolff. Wolff is hands down, THE Bach expert. And/or "Bach: Essays on His Life and Music Bach: Essays on His Life and Music by Christoph Wolff;

Mozart: "Mozart: A Life" by Maynard Solomon;

Beethoven: Beethoven: Revised Edition also by Maynard Solomon;

Great composers of piano music: "Masters of the Keyboard" by Konrad Wolff

The following is a copy of my review of the Penguin and Gramophone Classical Music Guides. It is hoped it will help provide you with and unbiased buying decision and lead you to what you're looking for.

How to go about building or adding to a comprehensive classical music CD collection.

I am a huge fan of Gramophone Magazine Gramophone and have been a subscriber to that exemplary publication for more years than I can remember. I have a huge classical music CD collection and add to it regularly. Indeed, I use Gramophone MAGAZINE for decisions on many CDs that I buy. However, when I want to buy a particular piece of music on a CD I consult this Gramophone Guide, as well as the Penguin The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music 2010: The Key Classical Recordings on CD, DVD and SACDand Rough Guides The Rough Guide to Classical Music (Rough Guide Music Reference)and I estimate that 95% of the time I find what I'm looking for in the Penguin Guide. While it may not be worth buying every single year, with the Penguin Guide your chances of finding little known gems of music, or coverage of composers works, that simply will not be found within the pages of the other two mentioned guides, are much greater. A simple comparison of the number of entries in the various guides is but one indication to support this. I think there's about 4 times as many entries in the Penguin as there are in the Gramophone. I'm not certain of that ratio but I'm too lazy to get up and check right now. LOL Furthermore, generally speaking, for a given piece of music the Penguin Guide will have insightful comments about several recordings that better help me make an informed buying decision.

I should also mention one other guide that's NOT worth considering. It's The Third Ear Classical Music: Third Ear: The Essential Listening Companion. This Guide also does not have the depth of Penguin's, or even this Gramophone Guide for that matter, and it hasn't been updated in over ten year so you won't get any recommendations of contemporary excellent recently recorded CDs of some of the young talent in the classical music world today (e.g., James Ehnes, Sarah Chang, Lang Lang, Joshua Bell, and the list goes on and on).

The Gramophone Guide is not bad though. For the recordings it does praise, I've found it to be a reliable source. Also, if you're just starting out building your collection it will guide you to the "must have" pieces in any classical music collection (e.g., Bach's Brandenburg Concertos and Orchestral Suites, Beethoven's fifth Symphony, Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto, Puccini's La Boheme, etc.) and excellent selections of those basics. Indeed, within the first few pages of the guide there's three or four pages of "Essential Pieces". However, you'll also find all those in the Penguin Guide and a lot more. If you're really serious about building a top notch classical music CD collection then, I am of the opinion that you should buy the Penguin Guide every two or three years and subscribe to Gramophone Magazine. Each monthly issue of Gramophone includes two pages of ten "Editor's Choice" recordings, one of which is a "CD of the Month" and there's also usually a DVD and an historical reissue recommendation. If there's a genre you're interested in within the Editor's Choices and you purchase it for your collection, you're likely to get a CD you'll be proud to own for the rest of your life. Additionally all of the Editor's Choice recordings are reviewed in depth and often compared to other highly regarded recordings of identical works so there's no shortage of ideas of what to buy.

Ted Libbey's NPR Guide The NPR Guide to Building a Classical CD Collection : The 350 Essential Works is "cute". It's been around a long time and it does get updated every few years but Gramophone and Penguin's recommendations are, in my humble opinion, far superior. I don't have the most recent issue but the one I do have severely lacks in the Opera genre and it's reviews of the "350 Essential Works and the specific CDs of those works pale in comparison to Gramophone and Penguin's reviewers' knowledge and insights into the nuances of the works being reviewed. Libbey's book is good if you want your hand held and be told what "essential works" to buy without formidable comparison and contrast but you won't get much of a music education from this publication.

One final note: I've noticed many reviewers of the Penguin and previous years' (at the time I wrote this review there were only three other reviews of this 2011 guide) Gramophone Guides to accuse them both of having a British Bias. Both guides are indeed written and edited by Brits but I've found this allegation to be without merit. I own probably 1,500 CDs, almost all of which were found within the pages of Gramophone Magazine and the Penguin Classical Music Guide. There is absolutely and unequivocally no British bias in my collection and I think my collection constitutes a statistically significant sample. Notwithstanding the foregoing fact, it would be nice to have another U.S. based entry in this market aside from the elementary NPR Guide and the Third Ear which is sorely dated and not of the same caliber even if it were current.

For a serious music lover I simply do not see a place for this (Rough Guide) book on my shelf. It's 688 pages. 75% of the books on the composers recommended above have nearly that many pages or more. This book is good for serving the needs of only the most casual of classical music interests; for someone who wants to sound smart at a cocktail party or something but really is not serious about learning about the great composers and the most exemplary recordings of the works they wrote. I am returning my copy and I am OCD when it comes to classical music publications! That alone should tell you something. LOL!