Penguin Guides

[Alison]

I don't think that agreeing has necessarily got to come into it and I'd probably disagree with Beefy from time to time!

Weren’t there little appendices and articles as well?

You might like to contribute something on vinyl Cloughers.

[Stunsworth]

The first one I bought was a 1977 copy of the second edition. The last one was bought in 1992. As someone who knew next to nothing about classical music I found them immensely useful.

[Braunschlag]

‘His Ring Cycle was not understood or recommended properly, preferring Solti's Gothic Horror show.’
Nearly fell of my perch, a priceless description, quite apart from the fact that I like the Solti set, thumbs up for what is possibly a pretty good description. I like it gothic, but then I would defend your right to call it that:)
Personally speaking I rather like my Penguin Guide, mostly for its information rather than its judgements, it always gives me an idea to order something I’ve never even considered. Great holiday reading to boot.

[Conchis]

Remember the days when the Beatles had an entry?

Sergeant Pepper got two stars and a comma'd star, iirc! :)

[jayne lee wilson]

In the early 70s it was very exciting to discover that there even was such a thing as the Stereo Record Guide. Truly expert, engaging, enthusiastic help in choosing between Haitink, Klemperer, Solti or Karajan, in Bruckner and Mahler, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky. And what about Kubelik, Jochum, or the Russians on Melodiya? It was part of that thrilling voyage of discovery with libraries and Radio 3.

Increasingly though, if you listened to Record Release, subscribed to the Gramophone and bought a Good CD Guide occasionally as a sort of yearbook, the Penguin Guide became more of an incidental pleasure, of browsing 2nd and 3rd opinions (relishing both your previous purchases and your disagreements) than a buyers’ guide. And there was a fair bit of duplication across them.

As time went by the Penguin Guide was simply overwhelmed by the expansion in repertoire and record labels (e.g. it usually covered Naxos but often overlooked Arte Nova; BIS was often in but CPO - not so much), new release and endlessly re-coupled re-release, not to mention Japanese and other international labels (like Altus or Exton, Weitblick or Venezia) whose existence it never really acknowledged. And of course, the slow pace of publication and revision often meant it got a little bogged down in its own judgements and comparative ratings.

***

Into the 21st Century, I found it more essential to buy the heavy, floppy, telephone-directory vastness of the RED Classical Catalogue (always kept with a handy magnifying glass), to find out exactly what was, or might be, available and then seek out reviews - anywhere online, or back in the Gramophone or IRR. Much, late-night, leafing-through and index-checking.…
Or just phone up Bath or MDT to see what they had of the RED listing, and just take a gamble, a punt on something interesting. I discovered a lot that way, things rarely mentioned in Guides or reviews.
Which in turn gave way to internet searching and sifting, often very exciting in itself as you sought some deletion on a foreign-language website.

Many of us now have a streaming service with a New Releases page (eg Qobuz/Audirvana Discover) and simply check it, then listen for ourselves, perhaps returning to favoured publications/reviewers, or seeking out new ones, for further insights.
So any big, thick print publication has been or is being superseded, every day after the date of its publication… except, perhaps, as a nostalgia-trip as you go back and read some amazingly comprehensive and insightful eagle’s-eye view of, say 8 Beethoven Cycles or a dozen Bruckner anthologies, remembering a simpler time and that earlier freshness of sheer enthusiasm, anticipation, discovery, saving up for each special purchase…

The Stereo Record Guide got many of us started, and began to teach us a vocabulary of intelligent listening. It is an essential part of the history of recorded music.

[Alison]

Excellent read Jayne. How often did the RED catalogues come out?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Remember the days when the Beatles had an entry?
Sergeant Pepper got two stars and a comma'd star, iirc! :)

And Revolver got an unmitigated three stars, if I do! (That was in the first, white-covered paperback edition, where, IIRC, Penderecki was sniffed away with a comment about how he "wanted to make instruments sound like electronics. (Why would he bother, one is tempted to ask.)" - one of those half-remembered asinine comments.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Weren't they 22/6?

Golden Guinea - 21/6
Concert Classics - 22/6
Ace of Clubs - 20/6
Ace of Diamonds - 25/6
Music for Pleasure - 12/6
Saga/Fidelity - 10/- to 12/6

Prices went up when purchase tax was raised.

[jayne lee wilson]

Excellent read Jayne. How often did the RED catalogues come out?

It was yearly from 1953 in close collaboration with Gramophone, but the last one I can find here is as long ago as 2004... the years fly by, don't they?

For some time after that I received regular mailouts of increasingly generous subscription offers, print and online. I don't know when it ceased, and there is surprisingly little afterglow about it online now.
But 2004 was the year I really got going on Amazon, then discovered the international versions and HMV Japan etc etc. Although still using the RED for some years, inter alia to reference Gramophone Reviews and help my choice, I felt I could find out much of what I needed - and crucially and excitingly, buy it immediately - online.
I recall asking Bath CDs about the Sony Boulez Schoenberg series - they could only supply one, the rest were deleted.
So I googled... a few weeks later I had them all via Amazon, courtesy various German, French and British sellers (Remember GMX - German Music Express?) . The ground was shifting beneath my feet, and I didn't hold back. Realising a fantasy I'd had since my teens when I visited the local record library at least twice weekly, starry-eyed at the treasures that surrounded me, I built most of my CD library through those international orders, really. Par Avion! (The exchange rates were a lot better then...).

It is a shame the RED has gone though - it might have been even more useful now, with so many versions of recorded classical music available. But they would need a big team of editors and assistants to keep up annually, or at all.

[Barbirollians]

Astonishing how expensive records were in the 1950s . I noted a review of Schubert sonatas with Kempff where the mean playing time was noted for a recording costing £1 19s 11p. In modern terms about £50 !

[Beef Oven!]

Astonishing how expensive records were in the 1950s . I noted a review of Schubert sonatas with Kempff where the mean playing time was noted for a recording costing £1 19s 11p. In modern terms about £50 !

Salt was almost as expensive as gold in 1550-300 BC but I'm not astonished. Shoes were at least double today's prices in the 1960s but I'm not astonished..... fascinating at most perhaps, but definitely not astonishing, unless of course .......

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Astonishing how expensive records were in the 1950s . I noted a review of Schubert sonatas with Kempff where the mean playing time was noted for a recording costing £1 19s 11p. In modern terms about £50 !

Were they really as much as that in the 1950s? In the mid-1960s, the standard full price for classical LPs was £1/17/06, though there were a few premium labels such as EMI's SAN and Decca's SET, that were a little higher.

[mikealdren]

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.
.

I was referring specifically to the 1000 Finest Classical Recordings and that chose Karajan as the best Beethoven cycle and best Brahms cycle and Tchaik 4-6 and Mendelssohn 3&4 etc etc.

[Beef Oven!]

I was referring specifically to the 1000 Finest Classical Recordings and that chose Karajan as the best Beethoven cycle and best Brahms cycle and Tchaik 4-6 and Mendelssohn 3&4 etc etc.

Ah yes. But to be fair, the "1000" finest was based on what went before .... I thought Abbado's Mendelsshon was rated above HvK's, and Abbado's Brahms, likewise - I can't check

[mikealdren]

Golden Guinea - 21/6
Concert Classics - 22/6
Ace of Clubs - 20/6
Ace of Diamonds - 25/6
Music for Pleasure - 12/6
Saga/Fidelity - 10/- to 12/6

Prices went up when purchase tax was raised.

I thought MfP were 10/6 and Heliodor etc 12/6 when I started in the late 1960s with full price at 39/6 which then rose to 42s. To check, I have just looked at Gramophone for Dec 1966 and found that full price then was indeed 39/6 but Saga was only 10/-. All were listed with Purchase Tax separately and of course we had the hangover from resale price maintenance so there were still no bargains to be had from cut price dealers.

Prices of things were very different then, Gramophone was 2/-, something of a bargain compared with the cost of LPs. Equipment was horrendously expensive and generally not very good.