The Rough Guide to Classical Music - Softcover

Staines, Joe

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1858282578 ISBN 13: 9781858282572

Publisher: Rough Guides, 1998

Synopsis

Introduction

Though few of them make much effort to entice a new audience to their product, the recording companies continue to pour out a flood of classical music. The catalogue of current classical CDs runs to more than two thousand tightly packed pages, and lists nearly three hundred composers before reaching the second letter of the alphabet. An average month sees some four hundred recordings added to the pile. THE ROUGH GUIDE to CLASSICAL MUSIC attempts to make sense of this overwhelming volume of music, giving you the information that's essential whether you're starting from the beginning or have already begun exploring.

As well as being a buyer's guide to CDs, this book is a who's who of classical music, ranging from Hildegard of Bingen, one of the great figures of twelfth-century European culture, to Michael Torke, born in Milwaukee in 1961. Of course we've had to be selective, both with the composers and with their output - Domenico Scarlatti, for example, was a fascinating musician, but no book of this scope could do justice to each of his five hundred keyboard sonatas. Gaetano Donizetti wrote more than seventy operas, but you wouldn't want to listen to all of them. We've gone for what we think are the best works by the most interesting composers, mixing some underrated people with the big names, and highlighting some we think you should keep an eye on.

When it comes to CDs the situation requires even greater ruthlessness. Beethoven may have written only nine symphonies, but there are more than one hundred versions of the fifth in the catalogue, and scores of recordings of all the others. Several of these CDs should never have been issued - they are there simply because any up-and-coming conductor has to make a Beethoven recording as a kind of calling card, regardless of any aptitude for the music. However, a fair proportion of the Beethoven CDs are worth listening to, because a piece of music as complex as a Beethoven symphony will bear as many different readings as a Shakespeare play.

Although there are recordings that stand head and shoulders above the competition, no performance can be described as definitive, which is one reason why we have often recommended more than one account of a work. Whereas all our first-choice CDs make persuasive cases for the music, some of the additional recommendations are included because they make provocative counter-arguments. Where price is a consideration, we've also listed a lower-cost alternative whenever appropriate - thus we might suggest a mid-price boxed set of symphonies as an alternative to buying them as full-price individual CDs. Finally, in many instances we've picked an outstanding pre-stereo performance as a complement to a modern recording.

These "historic" reissues are the one reliable growth area in the classical music industry, and their success is not due to mere nostalgia. There are some great musicians around today, but there's also a lot of hype in the business, with many soloists owing their success more to the way they look than to the way they play - and, conversely, many superlative musicians who remain obscure because they don't project the requisite glamour. It's in the area of orchestral music and opera that the situation is especially bad, notwithstanding the technically immaculate quality of many digital recordings. Orchestral musicians are now trained to a very high standard, but only a few of the top-class orchestras enjoy the sort of long-term relationship with an individual conductor that can mould a distinctive identity. The same goes for opera companies, which used to have a stable core of singers and musicians working under the same conductor for years. Now there's a system based on jet-setting stars, who might be performing in London one night, New York the next, then in the recording studio for a few days to record something with people they hadn't met until the day the session started. You don't necessarily get a good football team by paying millions for a miscellaneous batch of top-flight players, and you don't build a good musical team that way either.

Musically, then, new is not always best. And don't assume that a recording made more than thirty years ago will sound terrible. Sound quality won't match that of digital CDs, but you'll be surprised at how good it can be - indeed, many people prefer the warmth of the old analogue sound to the often chilly precision produced by modern studios. (We've warned you if surface noise or tinny quality might be a hindrance to enjoyment.) In short, you'll be missing a lot if you insist on hi-tech - few recent releases can match Vladimir Horowitz's 1940 account of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1, for instance, or Josef Hofmann's versions of the Chopin piano concertos from the 1930s.

About this title

About the Author

Jonathan Buckley was editorial director at Rough Guides, where he wrote several guidebooks, including for Tuscany and Umbria, Florence, and Venice. He has also contributed to The Rough Guide to Classical Music and The Rough Guide to Opera. Buckley published his first novel, The Biography of Thomas Lang, in 1997, and has written several more, including the critically acclaimed Xerxes and The River Is the River. 

Joe Staines is a freelance writer and the author of The Rough Guide to Classical Music and The Rough Guide to Classical Music: 100 Essential CDs, and the coauthor of Exploring Rural Portugal. BBC Music Magazine called Staines’s The Rough Guide to Classical Music, "The perfect classical music primer."

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

How this book works

Immediately after this introduction you'll find a list of all the composers covered in the guide, arranged chronologically, so you can see at a glance who fits where. If you find you like the music of Palestrina, you could check the list and decide to listen to Byrd, his contemporary. Things are more complicated with the stylistically diverse twentieth century: Xenakis and Arnold may have been born just a year apart but their music seems to come from different worlds. When a musical connection does exist, as in the case of Schoenberg and Berg, or P rt and Tavener, a cross-reference in the text will point you in the right direction. At the end of the book there's a detailed glossary, defining all the technical terms we've used.

Between lies the bulk of the guide, an A to Z of composers from John Adams to Alexander Zemlinsky. Each entry starts with an introduction to the composer's music, usually with an outline biography. (Many composers were too busy writing music to lead interesting lives, but if there's a story to tell we tell it.) That's followed by a run-through of the main compositions, with subheadings for individual works that need detailed discussion. These subheadings follow the same basic order, moving from largest-scale works down to the smallest: thus operas precede symphonies and concertos, which in turn precede chamber works and solo instrumental music. With the most important figures - such as Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven - we've generally grouped the music under generic headings (eg "Symphonies"), giving an introduction to each composer's work in that genre before going on to the most important individual pieces, which are then arranged chronologically.

Under each heading you'll find a short discussion of the piece or pieces to which the heading refers, followed by recommended recordings of those pieces, and a review of each CD. The CD details conform to a regular format: soloist first; then orchestra (and/or choir); then conductor, with the record company and serial number in parenthesis. (The serial number is generally the same in Europe as in North America, except that the -2 suffix is usually dropped in North America.) You'll have to get your store to order many of the CDs we've recommended, as most stores stock just the best sellers and the new releases. What's more, some of the major companies have begun targeting what they regard as non-mainstream material at a specific audience. Thus the EMI recording of Samson Fran ois playing Ravel will be easily available in France but only available as a special import in Britain and the US. Ordering should not be a problem, however, and you should be able to get hold of eighty percent of our recommendations within ten days of asking for them, with imports taking perhaps a week longer. Should you find that a listed CD is not in your store's catalogue, get them to check that the performance has not been repackaged under a different serial number - the major companies are pretty quick to delete slow-moving items, before eventually reissuing them, either at a lower price or combined with different music.

Each CD listing in the book is preceded by a symbol indicating the price of the CD, as in the following examples of recordings of Vivaldi's Four Seasons:

r Freiburg Baroque Orchestra; Goltz (Deutsche Harmonia Mundi 05472 77384-2; with Violin Concertos Op. 8, Nos. 5 & 6) = over £10 or $13.

M Raglan Baroque Players; Kraemer (VER 5 61172-2; with Violin Concertos Op. 8, Nos. 5, 6, 10 & 11) = £7-10 or $8-13.

c English Chamber Orchestra; Garcia (ASV CDQS 148; with other Vivaldi concertos) = under £7 or $8.

The pricing of CDs is a contentious subject. The difference between prices in North America and Britain is explained by differences in taxation and mark-up margins, but you'll come across the argument that top-price CDs are still overpriced in both markets. Certainly some CDs are too expensive - occasionally a label will recycle a best-selling vinyl disc as a full-price CD with little more than half an hour's music on it. That said, the vast majority of CDs are good value. The catalogues of the multinationals are bursting with CDs that pack the contents of two former LPs onto a single eighty-minute disc, often at mid-price or lower. As well as this you'll find that big stores often have special promotions, while many smaller outlets can beat the average prices of the megastores, and there are plenty of mail-order companies selling CDs at a discount.

On top of all this, in recent years there's been an explosion of budget labels, led by Naxos. Don't think that a CD can't be any good if it hasn't got a famous face on the cover - the commitment you get on many of the budget-label performances often outweighs the finesse of the major-league players, and in several instances they win on all fronts. The success of these relative newcomers has spurred the big companies to put more effort into their own budget-price series - every big company now has a range of CDs costing less than half the top price, and two-for-the-price-of-one packages are increasingly popular. All in all, the CD format has made it easier than ever to accumulate a classical collection at moderate cost and, though alternative recording technologies do surface from time to time (such as the short-lived DAT), for the foreseeable future the CD will remain the dominant format.

Edition details

• Publisher: Rough Guides
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1858282578
• ISBN 13: 9781858282572
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 480