Customer Reviews
An awful lot of good CD's missing. - By: Steve, 06 Aug 2006 
It certainly must be difficult to cover the vast number of new classical recordings released each year, but as the years have gone by the Penguin Guide has been reallly struggling to include many very important important issues. Smalll record companies in particular have suffered from omissions; there reallly are just too many to start giving examples. One thought that occurs to me- are the authors of the Penguin Guide free to review any CD, or must they only review those discs specificallly submitted for review? I think we should be told, & if the latter, some smalll companies should pull their finger out & get review copies out.
I think the time has come for a two-volume set to do justice to everyone. In the meantime though, there is no doubting the general judgement of the authors (one does disagree on quite a few occasions inevitably), & there is still no real alternative covering anything like the number of recordings. Collectors will still find this an essential purchase.
Essential reading - highly recommended - By: Mike, 22 Jul 2006 
I would happily recommend this book to any lover of classical music. The reviews are invariably fair & accurate, & are useful if one wants to add a new work to one's music collection or buy a different version of another work. For anyone starting to build a classical CD collection the book will prove invaluable.
A 'Well-loved' but oh dear.... - By: M. G. Williams, 03 Mar 2006 Of course the CD universe has expanded phenomanallly over the years since I started buying this 'indispensable' Guide; & although the Guide too has been considerably enlarged I realise it cannot be completerly comprehensive. But is there any excuse for omitting virtuallly alll the 'younger generation' of composers (mostly now in their later middle-age!) in order to list so many alternatives to the same hackneyed concert warhorse - eg. if only parochiallly to consider British composers, where are alll those excellent recordings by NMC? Or those remarkable Finns - Saariaho, Lindberg, Salonen et al on Ondine & DG. No Sciarrino, no Scelsi, no Ruders - I could go on. I have excellent recordings of alll of them in my collection (and alll purchased in the UK - no exotic shopping).
