Penguin Guides

[Alison]

Cloughers you write with such eloquence and its quite clear that as you are a LP collector of some eminence.

[Cockney Sparrow]

Enjoyed this programme

What programme?

[Alison]

What programme?

The OP had been listening to last Saturdays Haydn BaL with Penguin Guide.

TBH, Haydn SQs would be one area where the Penguin would be of very little use today other than a lesson in how the landscape has changed.

[mikealdren]

They later tried the 1000 best recordings format which marked the end.

Yes, unless you liked Karajan, there was little point in reading it!

[Conchis]

Coincidentally enough, "When Siegfried is outsung by Mime, the time has come to object" (?or "complain") is one quotation that sticks in my mind - not least because that is the case in most of the recordings they reviewed, not least the Rosetted Solti set.

They were great fun to read in the '70s and '80s, but were flawed even then of course - and by the late nineties, the elderly gentlemen just couldn't keep up with the number of releases and deletions each year - and then when downloads came along ... In the internet era, online reviews and comments are far more reliable than the Guides ever were.

Yes - that's one I remember, too: and it was 'complain'! :)

I think they were being a bit harsh, though there's no denying that Thomas sounds a bit like a Lieder singer who'd wandered in from an adjoining studio.

The Guide was a bit of a boys' club and I suppose as they aged, their faculties and facility with 'new' technology might have declined (I can emphathise there!). I think Jayne Lee Wilson of these parts would have been an asset to the team in their declining years.....

[Conchis]

The Penguin Guides' influence gave birth to a least two critical shibboleths:

The Pastoral Symphony is the runt of the litter in Karajan's first DG cycle.

The 6th is the runt of the litter in his Bruckner cycle ('sounds like sight-reading').

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

...and some Concert Classics!

I'd give a Golden Guinea for them.

[Alison]

‘The Penguin Guide era was the Karajan era’. Discuss.

[Alison]

Perhaps not as HvK died in 1989 but I sort of know what I mean!

[Barbirollians]

Perhaps not as HvK died in 1989 but I sort of know what I mean!

One also often had the feeling of compromise about the book - one might find a recording raved about by EG in Gramophone yet more coolly received by RL in Quarterly Retrospect ending up with a halfway house review in the Guide that did nobody any favours.

[Beef Oven!]

One also often had the feeling of compromise about the book - one might find a recording raved about by EG in Gramophone yet more coolly received by RL in Quarterly Retrospect ending up with a halfway house review in the Guide that did nobody any favours.

On the contrary. I would say that a second perspective on a recording is helpful. Remember, it's a guide book not an unimpeachable authority.

[Alison]

I always sense BBM knows his Penguins.

[Beef Oven!]

The OP had been listening to last Saturdays Haydn BaL with Penguin Guide.

TBH, Haydn SQs would be one area where the Penguin would be of very little use today other than a lesson in how the landscape has changed.

I think the presenter did the same! The views expressed on this BaL were very Penguin Guide! Few people got the seemingly antithetical performances of The London Haydn Quartet and one person even bemoaned the fact that there weren't enough Quartetto Italiano Haydn string quartets to listen to!

Maybe we're the generation of the Penguin Guides and similarly have not changed with the landscape.

[waldo]

I must have spent hundreds of hours pouring over my penguin guides. I think I only had two editions - one from the early nineties and one towards the very end of its run. I thought it was invaluable and was surprised when it stopped coming out. I didn't know enough (and still don't) to even consider whether it had faults. It was just pleasant to read and very informative; useful for learning about the standard repertoire, as well as the merits of particular recordings. I would happily buy a new one tomorrow if it came out.

[Beef Oven!]

Yes, unless you liked Karajan, there was little point in reading it!

Hmm. Not sure about that. They gave his Beethoven a rough ride, especially the digital cycle. His Ring Cycle was not understood or recommended properly, preferring Solti's Gothic Horror show. As mentioned elsewhere, a great disservice was done to his marvellous Bruckner 6 and I'm sure many people never question the PG and lost out on this tremendous recording.

He got the nod on Parsifal when it should have been Kubelik and was favoured with a few others similarly, but this was more than off-set by the puzzling downgrading of his Brahms.

Given that rightly or wrongly, for better for worse, Karajan was and is the greatest conductor phenomenon in the last 60 years, he will figure prominently in a thing like the Penguin Guides.

Although I gave up on them and chucked all my (hardback, incidentally) copies, they gave me countless hours of enjoyable reading and a priceless guide through music that was to me fairly unknown. But I always made my own mind up.




.