Gramophone

[MickyD]

Much to my surprise, this morning I received a free copy of February's 'Gramophone', along with an invitation to subscribe. Has anyone else had the same? Are subscriber numbers falling?

[VodkaDilc]

I've started buying it most months, but I find it's fairly quickly read and certainly not worth keeping for reference, as it was in earlier decades - and as IRR was. The reviews are acceptable, but rarely have the quality to make me go and buy a CD; and there are some very odd allocations of reviews to reviewers. I could go into detail, but I won't. No free offers as yet, but I did respond quite robustly last time a request to subscribe was sent to me.

I hope it keeps going, but it's well past its peak.

[Barbirollians]

It is a lot better than it was during the nadir of the Inverne years but not anywhere as good as it was in the past . Review lengths still pretty short compared to the old days .

[umslopogaas]

I've subscribed for at least forty years. I buy some CDs every month based on the reviews, concentrating on music I dont know: I've got enough Beethoven symphonies and Brahms concertos. I must say that quite a lot of the music by composers I've never heard of doesnt make any lasting impression, but every now and again I discover something memorable. People are always saying its not like it was, but what magazine is? I'm happy to accept their recommendations, while acknowledging that the reviewers' tastes dont always coincide with mine.

There's no interest in back numbers. I used to keep them, then realised I never looked at them and advertised them for seventeen quid in the small ads - effectively free, since that was the cost of the ad. No takers, so they all went in the recycling bin. I now pass them on to the local hifi shop, so they can read the equipment reviews.

[Ferretfancy]

I buy it but I don't subscribe any more. I think that it has improved, but agree that the reviews are short and comparisons with other versions in circulation are virtually non existent. Of course the Gramophone of old was not faced with the torrent of releases we have today, which must make in depth reviewing more difficult.
For me, there is also the point that with a large collection do I need to buy more music? If the Gramophone has an enthusiastic recommendation of, say, a pair of Mozart Piano Concertos, do I really need to add them to performances by Brendel, Uchida, Zacharias etc. etc.?

[Beef Oven!]

Subscribed from late 80s to somewhere in the 2000s (?).

Last year took out an electronic subscription (magazine, archive, reviews and data-base) used a discount code and got it for £58 per annum.

I seem to read the entire magazine in about 45 minutes to an hour, before it used to take much, much longer.

Reviews are too short. Audio section isn't as good as it used to be, but I still rate it as good.

To be honest, I only stick with it for the archive and data-base of reviews.

Am I looking at the past through rose-tinted spectacles, in a pessimistically romantic way?

[Pulcinella]

As a long-time subscriber, I pay £11.10 per quarter by direct debit, and probably get £3.70's worth (slightly less? Not sure if that's for three issues or covers all 13 over the year) of reading out of each issue, even if, like with Beefy, that only takes about an hour.
I keep the year's worth of issues, then ditch them each January and start again.

[Sir Velo]

I buy it but I don't subscribe any more. I think that it has improved, but agree that the reviews are short and comparisons with other versions in circulation are virtually non existent. Of course the Gramophone of old was not faced with the torrent of releases we have today, which must make in depth reviewing more difficult.

i'm not sure I totally agree with that! Most of the releases these days are reissues, and these were always covered by Gramophone; firstly, since I've been a reader, by Alan Sanders, and latterly by Ivan March and Rob Cowan in various summary reviews. I would have thought that there are no more actual new releases out there than in the halcyon days of the industry - ie 70s/80s. In fact, quite possibly, considerably fewer.

Unfortunately, various editors in their wisdom have commissioned surveys which have apparently suggested that the majority of the readership would prefer shorter reviews. Whether the results of these surveys were sufficiently representative of the readership at large is moot. A few querulous responses berating the length of reviews; that there wasn't the time for a busy person to plough through them etc, unnecessary detail, blah blah, and the baby is thrown out with the bathwater.

However, we probably have to face the fact that the days of the hard copy specialist magazine are numbered. Most of the reviews I read are online - chiefly from other customers- Amazon etc. Sometimes these are dross; sometimes informative. I haven't yet subscribed to the Gramophone archive. It can be very entertaining to read the initial reception of what latterly became a celebrated recording. Sadly, however, there are few out there these days who write with the elegant prose of a Richard Osborne or a Jerrold Northrop Moore.

[Roslynmuse]

I've been buying Gramophone since 1977 and I'm not sure if my excitement at reading it in those days was as much to do with the fact that to this teenager there was so much to discover; that has long been replaced by a certain weariness at seeing the big labels, standard rep and established names being reviewed at the expense of smaller, independent labels, and more unusual rep - although one can always point to the exceptions. Length of reviews - in the 60s and early 70s they were VERY short, even more generalised than now; but there are few reviewers I trust in the same way I trusted some of the names from 30 or 40 years ago. I have noticed a trend towards praising almost everything (this seems particularly true of piano discs) and, without any comparisons, these reviews are pretty meaningless. As far as the number of new discs issued goes - I'm sure the list of new releases is longer than it was in the 70s and 80s but has probably fallen off over the last 10 years or so. I wish that - now that discs are not automatically reviewed - there was more detail in the new releases listing; that would be a really useful service, although I guess it's down to how much info the record companies/distributors provide.

[Barbirollians]

I bought my first Gramophone as a student in Feb 1986 ( 30 years ago this month ) to read on a train journey to London from Sheffield and I think it had a very young Esa Pekka Salonen on the front - my memories of longer reviews are from 1980s and 1990s I think . I remember it taking a long time to read Gramophone in those days .

[sidneyfox]

I buy three or four copies per year usually in the summer when I take a holiday abroad. I used to subscribe in the 1970's and 1980's.

Its not as good as I remember it. Very superficial and the advertisements are not as interesting. I liked reading the one page Bath compact discs advert. The reviews were good as well.

[VodkaDilc]

Much to my surprise, this morning I received a free copy of February's 'Gramophone', along with an invitation to subscribe. Has anyone else had the same? Are subscriber numbers falling?

Yes, it arrived this morning. The code IRR4495 above my address would suggest that they have got access to IRR's subscription list. The offer would save £9.50 over a year, when compared with buying it from a local shop each month; I won't be tempted.

The free sample is the issue with Boulez on the cover, which I have already read and discarded.

[Nick Armstrong]

the issue with Boulez on the cover, which I have already read and discarded.

I was tempted to seek out this issue. Nothing much in there?

I bought the Jan one (appropriately Janine Jansen on the cover) and got a lot out of it - a distinct improvement on the previous 5 years or so, I thought. But that's the first one for a year or more (having religiously bought every one c. 1983 - 2010)

[Nick Armstrong]

I think that it has improved, but agree that the reviews are short

Not sure I completely agree with the second part of that comment - the two Richard Osborne reviews of Brahms recordings (Jansen/VC; Welser-Möst/Symphonies) in the January issue were both thoughtful and reasonably extensive, for instance. I particularly liked the description of FW-M's Brahms 1 sounding not like Beethoven 10 but rather Schumann 5... Like all good reviewing, it made me curious to hear it - quite a feat, as it would take quite a lot to prompt me to listen to FW-M in anything. So - properly stimulating, and challenging to one's pre-conceptions.

[Don Petter]

My freebie also came this morning.

Haven't looked yet. My first copy was purchased in December 1957, and I subscribed for years until the rot set in. Since then downgraded to a shared buying arrangement with a like-minded friend, but I only get the copies from him every three months or so.

Doubt that I shall take up the offer.