The Classical Good CD and DVD Guide 2005

Rating:
Summary: A user's guide to the Gramophone Guide
Review: Brief observations that I've made after nearly a decade of using the Gramophone Guide:

* The Guide is primarily artist driven. Think of Ralph Waldo Emerson's adage: "There is no history, only biography." In other words, artists make it all possible, and superlative ones need to be recognized and rewarded. Favorite Gramophone artists currently on the scene -- and this should be obvious by browsing through the Guide -- include Perahia, Argerich, Pollini, Manze, Hough, Joshua Bell, Hahn, Andsnes, Pires, Uchida, Aimard, Harnoncourt, Gardiner, Hickox, Maggini Quartet, Lindsay Quartet, William Christie, Rene Jacobs, Alessandrini, Rousset, Pierre Hantai, etc., etc.

* It is not uncommon for Gramophone's most strongly recommended recording of a piece to currently be out of print. In such a case, rather than recommending a less worthy recording, the Guide will simply not make a recommendation at all for that piece. When the preferred recording becomes available again, it will be restored to the Guide. Thus, a newcomer often gets the mistaken impression either that no recordings of that piece have been reviewed (rarely the case), or that the piece is not considered worthy of a place in the canon (sometimes the case; see the next point).

* Often a recording acclaimed by critics elsewhere is not included in the Guide -- for example, many issues in Hyperion's series of "Romantic Piano Concertos." Such recordings are not included because the music itself is not deemed of sufficient intrinsic musical quality. However, because Gramophone wants to support such an undertaking as a whole, those issues in the series that are found recommendable are thus *strongly* recommended -- e.g., the Hyperion volumes devoted to Saens, Moscheles, Scharwenka, Lyapunov, etc.

* The music industry has scared the pants off the Gramophone critics with cries that the classical recording industry is doomed. Consequently, Gramophone often recommends recordings in the interest of supporting favorite artists. For example, Zimerman's 2004 disc of Rachmaninov concertos was his first DG release in several years, and the music itself was likewise recorded several years ago. In mortal dread that this great artist's recording contract might be terminated if this CD does not sell well, Gramophone hails it as a legendary-status benchmark recording (which it may or may not be).

* An effort is made to determine at least one best recording that can be recommended in any given series of recordings -- often, to help promote awareness of it, this is the first or second CD in the series. Several or even many discs in a series may be recommended in the short-term, but usually one or two are rated more highly and thus are considered long-term "keepers." For example, in Vanska's series of Sibelius symphonies for BIS this is the disc of the 6th and 7th symphonies. Or in King's series of Vivaldi's sacred music, this is the disc of motets (vol. 2) and the disc with the Stabat Mater. Or in Bernstein's series of American music for DG, this is the live LAPO disc with Appalachian Spring and Barber's Adagio.

* Certain artists are deemed to be best-suited to certain areas of the repertoire. For example, Pletnev's Mozart and Haydn recordings are not recommended because his playing can not usually be termed "Classical" in style. Perahia's solo piano recordings of Chopin are acclaimed, but his sound is deemed too lightweight for Beethoven's or Brahms's sonatas. Manze is usually acclaimed in early 18th-century music, but Holloway is usually preferred in 17th-century music.

* An exception to the previous: Any artist can be recommended for any repertoire if that repertoire has heretofore been underserved or underrecorded. Thus, Hamelin is not recommended in Schumann (mainstream repertoire) but is recommended in Godowsky or Alkan or Medtner. Only the "greatest" artists are recommended in the core repertoire.

* By selecting a recording for (or omitting a recording from) the Guide, Gramophone's critics are carrying on a dialogue with other critics, such as those from Diapason, BBC Music Magazine, or the Penguin (who are themselves Gramophone writers). For example, Gramophone missed the boat by not recommending the Rare Fruits Council's recording of Biber's "Artificiosa-Ariosa," which was awarded the Diapason d'Or. Consequently, a subsequent Rare Fruits recording of Bach was strongly recommended (a "make-up call," if you will, and a poor decision, because the Bach CD is dreadful when compared to the glorious Biber CD).

* As an addendum to the previous point, such a dialogue with other critics often takes the form of a veiled criticism or even outright rebuke. For example, if the Gramophone-resenters at Classicstoday.com recommend a recording, it is not uncommon for Gramophone to try to "sink it" -- and vice versa. Classicstoday.com writer Daivd Hurwitz, in particular, has been obliquely critiqued and even parodied innumerable times by Gramophone's critics. These critical skirmishes are often quite amusing in a tempest-in-a-teapot kind of way, as each group tries to wield its commercial clout by convincing their loyal followers to purchase this or that recording.

* Addendum to the preceding: Sometimes the commercial support drummed up for an artist by the Gramophone critics pays off handsomely. For example, for a decade Simon Rattle could do no wrong: Virtually all his EMI recordings were acclaimed, sold relatively well, and as a result Rattle became attractive to one of the world's premiere orchestras, the Berlin Philharmonic -- where Rattle is now chief conductor! To an American spectator, it seems that the Gramophone (and Penguin) critics were instrumental in helping Rattle obtain such a prestigious post by indefatigably campaigning in support of his recordings.

* As has been universally recognized, there is a strong British tint to everything. Homegrown talent and record labels (for example, Rachel Podger or Chandos) are dutifully supported, and sometimes this leads to highly questionable recommendations -- for example, the Lindsays are preferred in Haydn, Beethoven, Mozart's string quintets, Schubert's string quintet, Dvorak, and Borodin, not to mention the British repertoire... Really? Are they that good? The answer, of course, is an emphatic "NO." An experienced user of the guide will learn to see through this British tint and discern what really merits a universal recommendation.

* The "one-recommended-recording-per-decade rule": Generally, a core piece of repertoire is represented by one recommended recording for roughly every decade. For example, in the 2004 Guide, notice the recording dates of the recommendations for the Grieg / Schumann piano concertos, or the Brahms symphonies. Incredibly, the major recording companies are aware of this, and so often resist re-recording repertoire until sufficient time has elapsed since the most recent "benchmark" recording. For example, Manze's recording of Biber's Rosary sonatas appeared roughly a decade after Holloway's Gramophone Award-winning recording of those same pieces -- this is not a coincidence! (Of course there are exceptions to this rule, but make no mistake, it does exist.)

* Space in the guide is limited, so often only one disc in a whole series is reviewed, but this review is a tacit endorsement of the entire series. For example, only one of Imogen Cooper's Schubert CDs is included, but her entire Schubert series has been well received and other discs have appeared in previous editions of the Guide.

* I am still working out the precise relationship between the British critics and the major record companies, such as Philips, Decca, and EMI. This relationship, whatever it is, is a strong one. Gramophone critics are often paid to write liner notes for these companies. Sometimes a Gramophone critic will actually request a certain reissue or even a new recording in the magazine, and these companies will oblige! In return, I think that the Gramophone (and Penguin) critics feel a certain obligation to try hard to find recordings to recommend on these labels. For example, on the Philips label, I'm really not convinced that so many Ivan Fischer and Valery Gergiev recordings are quite as superlative as indicated -- I suspect that this might be a case of the critcs supporting the company (Philips). Again, this is possibly because Philips (and Universal) has scared the pants off the critics with cries of financial distress.

* Nationalism (or at least the belief in national character) is alive and well. Il Giardino Armonico are recommended for Vivaldi but not for Bach because their "Mediterranean effervescence" doesn't suit the Northern European repertoire. Jordi Savall is recommended in French and Iberian music but rarely in German or English. The positive: Gramophone is concerned to ensure that national music-making traditions carry on. For example, the central Viennese classics are often recommended as performed by Viennese musicians, who have a very well-defined tradition and sound. The negative: We get bombarded with the ridiculously cliched phrase that such-and-such performers have the music "in their blood." And how many times must Italian conductors turn in performances that are described as "red-blooded"?!

* Addendum to the preceding: the well-known British sense of "fair play" is also alive and well. This can lead to ridiculous scenarios. For example, core British repertoire such as the symphonies of Vaughan Williams is recommended in the execrable recordings by Haitink because of this sense of "fair play": If Gramophone recommends recordings by British performers of non-British repertoire such as Bach and Beethoven, it's only fair that the native British repertoire be likewise recommended when performed by non-British performers.

* Complementary to this sense of fair play is an interest in diversity. To their credit, Gramophone reviews recordings on a greater number of labels than the Penguin Guide. Included in the guide are CDs on labels such as Glossa, Linn, and Capriccio, which are sparsely or not at all represented in the Penguin. Also in the interests of diversity and fair play, young, unestablished, and often obscure performers ("underdogs") are recommended -- for example, the Rodrigo series on Naxos, or the Sibelius series by Sakari and the Icelanders, also on Naxos. Exercise caution, however: While recommendations for such underdogs are doubtless well-intentioned, such recordings often can not in the final analysis withstand comparison with "the heavyweights." Sakari and his band, while likeable, are ultimately not top-notch.

* To their everlasting credit -- and this is their real value -- Gramophone critics are remarkably adept at sizing up a recording and determining whether or not it is "a keeper." This comes only with experience, and this is what makes the Gramophone Guide invaluable to the newcomer to classical music. There have been instances when I have initially disagreed with the assessment of the critics, only to realize -- perhaps after acquiring more experience myself -- that Gramophone's original assessment was dead-on after all. If you want to acquire an educated taste in classical music, you could do much worse than let Gramophone's critics be the teachers who form your taste.

* Recordings are not simply measured against other recordings; they are also measured against an imagined "ideal" recording. Gramophone critics are not merely record reviewers; they are often noted scholars and experts in a particular area of the repertoire. Some are so thoroughly conversant with the musical gestures and rhetoric of a given musical period that they can look at the score and imagine what the "ideal" performance would sound like -- this forms the basis for determining whether the recording in question sets a "benchmark," or whether it is merely a stopgap that may or may not suffice until a better recording comes along. In some cases, Gramophone will not make a recommendation at all for a piece because they are literally waiting for the recording to come along that begins to approach this "ideal" recording.

* Many of these observations also apply to the Penguin Guide. Greenfield, March, and Layton are the "elder statesmen" among Gramophone writers, and they have perhaps both initiated and inculcated many of the trends observed here. At the same time, they are only three of many regular Gramophone contributors, and so they often use the Penguin Guide as a platform to voice dissent. An experienced user of these guides will use these different critical voices to "triangulate" where the truth actually lies. (In navigation, "triangulation" is the process whereby two known points are used to determine the position of an unknown point.)

* As you can see, understanding the "subtext" is key in making the Gramophone Guide work for you. I wouldn't keep buying it every year if it didn't reward me with countless marvelous CDs that I wouldn't have otherwise discovered. And I wouldn't keep buying it if I wasn't convinced that the guide has ultimately made me a more discerning, educated listener. Nonetheless, it's essential to understand the guide's biases and motivations to make it work for you.

Rating:
Summary: The best guidebook to the Western musical canon
Review: The most common criticism of this guide, particularly when compared to the heftier Penguin Guide, is that it does not include enough reviews. I find this to be rubbish, frankly. The reviews in the Gramophone Guide are taken from reviews that originally appeared in Gramophone magazine, which puts out 13 issues every year, with each issue containing *at least* 150 new reviews, for a total of over 13 X 150 = 1,950 new reviews each year. Call it an even 2,000; that's 4,000 new reviews over the course of two years. As an owner of the 2003/4 Penguin Guide, I doubt very, very much that it contains over 4,000 (!) new reviews that did not appear in the previous edition!

Of course, not every review in Gramophone magazine is reprinted in the Gramophone Guide, and the cover of the Guide says exactly why: It contains reviews of only the "greatest" music in the "best" recordings. In other words, it's *selective* -- I don't know why this is so hard for people to understand! The Gramophone Guide includes *only* CDs that are recommendable: A recording, simply by *being in the guide at all,* meets a certain quality bar and is therefore recommended! And if a CD is not in the Gramophone Guide, it is far more likely that it was deliberately omitted and not that it wasn't reviewed. In being selective, the Gramophone Guide has essentially become

*a canon of musical recordings*,

the best of the best. Indeed, a more apt title for this guidebook would be "The Western Musical Canon in the Best Available Recordings." And really, that's all you need, isn't it?

In his epoch-making 1994 book "The Western Canon," literary scholar and critic Harold Bloom had this to say about why a literary canon is necessary: "Who reads must choose, since there is literally not enough time to read everything, even if one does nothing but read." With more than a millennium's worth of Western music steadily proliferating on CD, the same could easily be said of listening to classical music! One must make choices -- often difficult choices -- and this is what the Gramophone Guide succeeds so admirably in doing. Gramophone's critics, in creating a musical canon, constantly weigh and measure and make qualitative decisions with respect to the big picture. They are keeping their finger on the pulse of the Western musical tradition, and they are not allowing themselves to be diverted by second-rate recordings of third-rate music. For this reason, for example, you will find only some reviews of Hyperion's recordings of Romantic piano concertos included. The others are not included *not* because they haven't been reviewed (they have), but because they aren't deemed of sufficient aesthetic value to warrant inclusion! Until you've familiarized yourself with, say, the string quartets of Haydn, Beethoven, and Bartok, or the piano sonatas of Beethoven, Schubert, and Scriabin, you really have no business *wasting time* with the comparatively imaginatively impoverished concertos of Fuchs and Kiel or Kullak and Dreyschock. To quote Harold Bloom again (place this in a musical context instead of a literary context):

"The overpopulation of books and authors brought about by the length and complexity of the world's recorded history is at the center of canonical dilemmas, now more than ever. 'What shall I read?' is no longer the question ... The pragmatic question has become: 'What shall I not bother to read?'"

In other words, if you're wondering what's worth listening to and what's not worth listening to, the Gramophone Guide can help you in a way that the Penguin Guide with it's ocean of three-star recordings of second- and third-rate music simply cannot. The Penguin's purported comprehensiveness is not necessarily a virtue.

On a different note, I'm always surprised by people who shop for CDs in what I consider the reverse of the proper process: First they find a CD in a store, and then they look it up to see what it's rated! In other words, mere availability determines what they buy -- not necessarily quality. (And these days, when classical music is allotted less and less shelf space, choosing a recording from a retail shelf means that your choice is *drastically* limited.) For these folks who want an opinion of a CD that happens to be at hand, the Penguin Guide is obviously more useful. By contrast, I prefer to find a sort of critical consensus as to what the "best" recording is, and then I go seek it out -- if this means ordering it from Europe, so be it. For these folks, the Gramophone Guide is the best route simply because it offers the "best of the best." And really, how helpful is it to consult the Penguin, only to find that something like 9 or 10 of the 14 available recordings all earn 3 stars!

And about the 2003/4 Penguin Guide in particular, which introduced the so-called "key" recordings: Surely I'm not the only one who's noticed that a disproportionate number of "key" recordings are on bargain labels? Notice the number of Apex, Naxos, Philips Duos, Double Deccas, Erato Ultimas, Virgin Doubles, etc., etc. Now I am absolutely *not* complaining about inexpensive classical music. What I *am* complaining about is a guide that makes recommendations based on price instead of solely on quality. I am perfectly capable of deciding how much money I want to spend; where I would appreciate some informed, expert advice is on what the best recordings are! The Penguin, in allowing price to be an over-determining factor, fails in providing this. I'm always wondering, is this CD recommended because it's good, or because it's cheap? Especially when a full-priced CD is given an enthusiastically glowing review but is not recommended vs. the Naxos or Apex alternative...

Finally, I love the Gramophone Guide simply because the reviews are so exceedingly well written -- hence, for me, they have authority in a way that the somewhat less well-written (and often vitriolic and ill-tempered) reviews on Classicstoday.com do not.

So if you're interested in learning what the best recordings of the best music are (and why), in reviews written by the best writers (and thus to my mind the best critics), you should consult the Gramophone Guide. I would still say that getting a second or third opinion is always a good idea -- every critic has his or her eccentricities or lapses in judgment, so it's wise to "read around." I prefer BBC Music Magazine for this purpose, occasionally Classicstoday.com, and sometimes the Penguin. (The latter for the more conservative approach, which does have the useful purpose of balancing out Gramophone, who perhaps a bit too often choose *not* to "play it safe.")

[Note: If you want to read archived Gramophone reviews that perhaps were never included in the Gramophone Guide, you can do so for *free* at Gramophone.co.uk. Simply click the links for "Gramofile." You must register with a valid e-mail address and then create a password, but thereafter you get free, unlimited access. The magazine has been around for at least three-quarters of a century and is still in the process of making their storehouse of reviews available online. I don't believe I've seen an online review dated earlier than the 1980s, so there is still quite a ways to go before *all* Gramophone reviews are searchable!]