A Guide to the Concerto

A Guide to the Concerto offers a fascinating survey of the growth and development of the concerto form from its origins in the seventeenth century to the present day. Written by a team of internationally renowned scholars and critics under the editorship of Robert Layton, it will prove invaluable to all who wish to understand more about this perennially popular form and expand their knowledge of the concerto repertoire.
Throughout, original and penetrating analyses that avoid technical jargon are illuminated by over 130 music examples. Among the many contributors are Dr. Robert Simpson, who discusses Beethoven's concertos with characteristic insight; H.C. Robbins Landon, foremost scholar of the Viennese classical period; David Brown, world authority on nineteenth-century Russian music; Michael Kennedy, author of acclaimed studies on Elgar and Britten, and Peter Dickinson, composer and leading writer on American music. Robert Layton himself provides an introduction and discography with hundreds of recommended recordings, and writes perceptively on the concerto in Scandinavia and the modern Russian concerto.
Informative and accessible, A Guide to the Concerto will both illuminate and stimulate. No serious music lover should be without it.

Robert Layton has been a critic for The Gramophone for thirty years and is editor of A Guide to the Symphony and co-author with Ivan March and Edward Greenfield of the Penguin Guide to Compact Discs, Cassettes, and LPs.