MusicWeb International One of the most grown-up review sites around 2024
60,000 reviews
... and still writing ...

Search MusicWeb Here Acte Prealable Polish CDs
 

Presto Music CD retailer
 
Founder: Len Mullenger                                    Editor in Chief:John Quinn             


BOOK REVIEW

Some items
to consider

new MWI
Current reviews

old MWI
pre-2023 reviews

paid for
advertisements

Acte Prealable Polish recordings

Forgotten Recordings
Forgotten Recordings
All Forgotten Records Reviews

TROUBADISC
Troubadisc Weinberg- TROCD01450

All Troubadisc reviews


FOGHORN Classics

Alexandra-Quartet
Brahms String Quartets

All Foghorn Reviews


All HDTT reviews


Songs to Harp from
the Old and New World


all Nimbus reviews



all tudor reviews


Follow us on Twitter


Editorial Board
MusicWeb International
Founding Editor
   
Rob Barnett
Editor in Chief
John Quinn
Contributing Editor
Ralph Moore
Webmaster
   David Barker
Postmaster
Jonathan Woolf
MusicWeb Founder
   Len Mullenger

 

AmazonUK £19.50 AmazonUS $23.10

 

The Penguin Guide to Recorded Classical Music 2009
by Ivan March, Edward Greenfield, Robert Layton and Paul Czajkowski
Paperback: 1602 pages
Publisher: Penguin
Language English
ISBN-10: 0141033355
ISBN-13: 978-0141033358
£30.00 (or less)
Experience Classicsonline



I would not go so far as The Daily Telegraph in saying that you cannot go wrong with the Penguin Guide. However, it is certainly the best classical CD and DVD vade mecum available. Even so it is on a hiding to nothing because apart from errors of commission the field to be covered is so vast that a paper volume - even of this magnitude - can only ever be selective. That said it could be somewhat better as we shall see.

As the 2009 edition, you would expect more up to date coverage but repeatedly it falls down on this. I did not do a comparison with previous editions but my impression was that many of the reviews had appeared in previous issues - nothing intrinsically wrong with this but the preponderance should be new. If the Guide is an annual then it needs to introduce more new material. Not that it is absent. New issues are covered but the coverage is patchy.

Unaccountable omissions - and I am not talking about 2008 now - include the Decca complete Malcolm Arnold boxes. That really is regrettable.

How wonderful though to see some obscure issues covered such as the Alwyn symphonies 1 and 2 conducted in archive recordings by Barbirolli (Dutton). I would not agree though that they are in good sound.

Inclusive - that's the word - well, up to a point. The seal is set by a review of Komei Abe's Symphony No. 1 on Naxos on p. 1. The Rochberg Naxos series is represented by the Fifth Symphony but what about the others (2 and Violin Concerto)? They deserve at least a mention.

Rodrigo: there’s no sign of the Brilliant box licensed out by EMI. Brilliant produced a pretty good and inexpensive complete Haydn symphonies box at their usual price. The sort of price people might be happy to pay. Those Adam Fischer recordings ARE mentioned but instead we get the Nimbus originals (a sequence of separate and admirable boxes). The Brilliant Classics version of these recordings at even less expense isn’t even mentioned. Why? Why are the budget bargain basement folk so often left out in the cold by these guides. Yes, Naxos is covered but Regis and especially Brilliant seem often to be beyond the pale. The hard pressed budgets of collectors seek a more inclusive approach.

Regis does however get a look-in with a treasured Barber-Measham collection with Molly McGurk's rightly admired Knoxville and much else.

We also get a review of the Harriet Cohen Bax Winter Legends and Goossens’ version of the Bax Second Symphony on Dutton. This is excellent.

There’s no Gösta Nystroem though. Bring him back in from the cold. It’s not as if recording are not available. Mind you Robert Layton never had much time for his Sinfonia del Mare - so perhaps that explains it.

Borodin’s three symphonies from Tjeknavorian are there - and that’s good news even if I would contest the compromised **(*) - it should be a *** and key symbol … but degustibus non est disputandum.

They say that Miaskovsky’s Fifth by Downes is to be preferred to Ivanov and the USSRSO - once to be had on an Olympia CD. Anyone who has listened to the two side by side will agree that the Ivanov sound is deficient by comparison but artistically Downes while powerful lacks the flaming intensity of Ivanov.

There is no mention of the Miaskovsky symphonies recorded complete in a Warner box at a very attractive price - yet the again magnificent single Svetlanov issues from Regis are given entries.

On page 529 there is a review of Roy Harris’s Second Symphony on Albany TROY515. It states that the coupling is Harris 3. No such thing. It’s Morton Gould 3 and an entry on p.472 confirms as much.

On the other hand newish boys on the block such as Lyrita - returned Lazarus-like from the dead and now more fully reconstituted than we could ever have hoped for - are well represented at least among the stereo issues: Benjamin, Bax, Moeran, Finzi, Howells, Ireland and Jacob.

So here’s a Guide that isn’t perfect - not by any stretch - but in the printed media you won’t find its coverage matched or in general its judgment bettered.

Rob Barnett


You won’t find its printed coverage matched or judgment bettered ... see Full Review





 


Advertising on
Musicweb


Donate and keep us afloat

 

New Releases

Naxos Classical
All Naxos reviews

Chandos recordings
All Chandos reviews

Hyperion recordings
All Hyperion reviews

Foghorn recordings
All Foghorn reviews

Troubadisc recordings
All Troubadisc reviews



all Bridge reviews


all cpo reviews

Divine Art recordings
Click to see New Releases
Get 10% off using code musicweb10
All Divine Art reviews


All Eloquence reviews

Lyrita recordings
All Lyrita Reviews

 

Wyastone New Releases
Obtain 10% discount

Subscribe to our free weekly review listing

 

 


EXPLORE MUSICWEB INTERNATIONAL

Making a Donation to MusicWeb

Writing CD reviews for MWI

About MWI
Who we are, where we have come from and how we do it.

Site Map

How to find a review

How to find articles on MusicWeb
Listed in date order

Review Indexes
   By Label
      Select a label and all reviews are listed in Catalogue order
   By Masterwork
            Links from composer names (eg Sibelius) are to resource pages with links to the review indexes for the individual works as well as other resources.

Themed Review pages

Jazz reviews

 

Discographies
   Composer
      Composer surveys
   National
      Unique to MusicWeb -
a comprehensive listing of all LP and CD recordings of given works
.
Prepared by Michael Herman

The Collector’s Guide to Gramophone Company Record Labels 1898 - 1925
Howard Friedman

Book Reviews

Complete Books
We have a number of out of print complete books on-line

Interviews
With Composers, Conductors, Singers, Instumentalists and others
Includes those on the Seen and Heard site

Nostalgia

Nostalgia CD reviews

Records Of The Year
Each reviewer is given the opportunity to select the best of the releases

Monthly Best Buys
Recordings of the Month and Bargains of the Month

Comment
Arthur Butterworth Writes

An occasional column

Phil Scowcroft's Garlands
British Light Music articles

Classical blogs
A listing of Classical Music Blogs external to MusicWeb International

Reviewers Logs
What they have been listening to for pleasure

Announcements

 

Community
Bulletin Board

Give your opinions or seek answers

Reviewers
Past and present

Helpers invited!

Resources
How Did I Miss That?

Currently suspended but there are a lot there with sound clips


Composer Resources

British Composers

British Light Music Composers

Other composers

Film Music (Archive)
Film Music on the Web (Closed in December 2006)

Programme Notes
For concert organizers

External sites
British Music Society
The BBC Proms
Orchestra Sites
Recording Companies & Retailers
Online Music
Agents & Marketing
Publishers
Other links
Newsgroups
Web News sites etc

PotPourri
A pot-pourri of articles

MW Listening Room
MW Office

Advice to Windows Vista users  
Questionnaire    
Site History  
What they say about us
What we say about us!
Where to get help on the Internet
CD orders By Special Request
Graphics archive
Currency Converter
Dictionary
Magazines
Newsfeed  
Web Ring
Translation Service

Rules for potential reviewers :-)
Do Not Go Here!
April Fools




Return to Review Index

Untitled Document


Reviews from previous months
Join the mailing list and receive a hyperlinked weekly update on the discs reviewed. details
We welcome feedback on our reviews. Please use the Bulletin Board
Please paste in the first line of your comments the URL of the review to which you refer.