Gramophone at 100

[jayne lee wilson]

Gramophone celebrates its 100th birthday in April 2023, and at a time when BBC Music seems to have lost its way with funding and direction, it feels more vitally important than ever. 100 years continuous publication of a journal devoted to Classical Music (in every sense, including the Contemporary), musicians, the recording media, the ever-evolving playback media and equipment. Gramophone has always kept its ear to the groundswell of new technology and New Music. Under Martin Cullingford, editor since 2011 and publisher (with Mark Allen Group) since 2014, the magazine is vibrant - thriving, its coverage as wide and deep as it has ever been.

*****
The Special issue includes nearly 50 pages of the best archived features and interviews. You’ll find Szigeti and Stravinsky with impassioned pleas for the recording of Contemporary Music - this in 1936. Or anecdotes like the one from Clifford Curzon, recalling his excitement in Germaine Tailleferre agreeing to come to his rehearsal of her Ballade. Excitedly telling Sir Henry Wood about this, Wood replied: “I’m having none of these women composers taking up my time. You’ll have to put her off, my boy”.
She didn't come….

Pablo Casals, learning to play an improvised Cello his father made from a strung gourd….
Rostropovich lamenting the lack of personality in recent interpretations “it isn’t very thoughtful, in my opinion, to criticize someone for simply not following the marked speeds…”

*****
A 20-page decade by decade history of Gramophone from James Jolly, surprisingly hardhitting and penetrating in its reflections on the arrival of SACD (a sonic pinnacle) and the almost contemporaneous and subsequent rise of mp3 (a significant, financially driven backward step, as (apart from dynamic range) DAB was, after FM); the cost/benefit of purchased recordings vs streaming..…the ambiguous impact of the Three Tenors and the Gorecki 3rd, when executives from outside the Music Business came in to look for the next big thing..... the state and status of Arts and Music in the World today. A fascinating commentary.

With a detailed historical timeline on music, recordings and hifi, from Blumlein Stereo to Quad Electrostatics, and right up to date with Hyperion/Universal and Presto/Apple streaming….

Many other features too.
Gramophone has enriched Classical Musical Life in so many ways; so many listeners owe their awareness and knowledge of Classical Music and the Recorded Catalogue, often to technology and aspects of hifi, to its wide and deep coverage; impossible to imagine our lives without it.

Even if you don’t currently subscribe, it’s well worth getting a copy of this Centenary Collectors’ Edition while it’s available; a 20th and 21st Century history of all that matters in Classical Music Recordings; full of so many wonderful and remarkable things….

[smittims]

Thanks for that copious summary, Jayne.

I well remember my first copy of The Gramophone, as it was then called, I think, in January 1968, with 'John Ogdon plays the Busoni Concerto' on the front cover. That was in the days when EMI had apparently bought the front page in perpetuity. I had heard of John Ogdon , but not of Busoni, so that was the start of an education. soon after , I started to hear of something called 'Lyrita'. and so it went on...

Does anyone else remember 'Nights at the Round Table' with W A Chislett, and 'Here and There' with Roger Wimbush?

They were always very critical of Stokowski in those days, and Leonard Bernstein's new recordings rarely had an unqaualified welcome. But the quality of the writing was never in doubt. 'I am trying to remember that I am writing a review of a recording' wrote Alec Robertson half-way through three columns on the Solti 'Rosenkavalier'. Even if you weren't buying the disc it was worth reading the reviews.

[Petrushka]

It's with something of a shock to realise that I've been reading Gramophone for exactly half of those 100 years, having bought my first issue in September 1973. In those days, back copies used to be in the dentist's waiting room along with the Giles cartoon books and women's magazines, National Geographics etc and that's how I learnt of the magazine's existence.

I was at College in Derby at that time and eagerly bought each copy from the station bookstall every month devouring it on the train journey home. Happy days.

I owe Gramophone (and the Proms) an enormous debt for teaching me so much about music at an early stage of interest and for the terrific enthusiasm of the G reviewers for highlighting records I just had to buy when, even on the meagre income I had in those days, I somehow managed to get them!

[Sir Velo]

The first edition I bought was in 1987 and for the next 10 years it was an indispensable purchase, educating me as much to the extraordinary riches of classical music as to the performances themselves. Maybe it's just me but the writers' words seemed to carry greater authority than the current crop.

As an impecunious schoolboy, Ivan March's Collectors' Corner was an invaluable buying guide to mid price and budget releases enabling me to build a reasonable collection on the cheap.

[Sir Velo]

Even if you don’t currently subscribe, it’s well worth getting a copy of this Centenary Collectors’ Edition while it’s available; a 20th and 21st Century history of all that matters in Classical Music Recordings; full of so many wonderful and remarkable things…

I remember the 75th anniversary celebrations and two special 75 Greatest Symphonies and 75 Greatest Choral Works appendices (Can it really be 25 years ago? ). There may have been others but, if so, don't tell me as it will annoy me that I somehow missed acquiring them!

Duly ordered. Jayne, Gramophone owes you commission.

[richardfinegold]

I have the issue but I just started the previous issue so probably won’t be a few weeks until I peruse it. I enjoyed jlw preview.
Gramophone has a reputation on these shores for being excessively biased in favor of U.K. artists, and there was a time when I felt that Simon Rattle could release a recording of himself gargling mouthwash in the morning to ecstatic Gramophone raves, but every review magazine tends to reflect the biases of its Editors or a few core critics, and under the current editor this practice seems to have been reined in. I particularly enjoy the retrospective features, such as when a classic recording is discussed in minutiae, or the Rob Cowan retrospectives.
Happy Birthday, Gramophone!

[Wolfram]

When the 100th anniversary edition arrived last week it prompted memories of a morning in April 1973 when my best friend at school at the time brought round the 50th anniversary edition of Gramophone that had just that day come out. He had hurried round with it not because it was the 50th anniversary edition, but because it contained the first review of Georg Solti’s recording of Parsifal. 50 years on the magazine still has that same power to generate excitement for all that’s new and good in classical music. It is a marvellous and indispensable institution. Happy Birthday, Gramophone.

(And the Solti Parsifal is still wonderful as well.)

[MickyD]

I have the issue but I just started the previous issue so probably won’t be a few weeks until I peruse it. I enjoyed jlw preview.
Gramophone has a reputation on these shores for being excessively biased in favor of U.K. artists, and there was a time when I felt that Simon Rattle could release a recording of himself gargling mouthwash in the morning to ecstatic Gramophone raves, but every review magazine tends to reflect the biases of its Editors or a few core critics, and under the current editor this practice seems to have been reined in. I particularly enjoy the retrospective features, such as when a classic recording is discussed in minutiae, or the Rob Cowan retrospectives.
Happy Birthday, Gramophone!

It's much the same here in France, the equivalent magazine DIAPASON tends to favour French artists.

I'm due over in the UK next week, so for old times sake will probably buy the Centenary Edition, though I terminated my subscription years ago when I discovered the much -lamented International Record Review.
Stunned to see that the cover price is now almost ten pounds!!

[pastoralguy]

I’m very lucky in living in a city where there are copious number of high quality classical cds to be found for a song in the many charity shops Edinburgh has to offer. What I love doing is looking up the reviews of my latest finds in the Gramophone’s search engine. Very often, the reviewers feelings about a disc absolutely chime with my opinions except the writers are are able to articulate their feelings much more succinctly than I could ever manage.

I can absolutely remember my first encounter with Gramophone when I stumbled across it in my local library. AT LAST, here was an organ that spoke to me and explained why recording A was better than B except that C was of historic value and should be heard. It’s been a great joy in my life and I have learned so much from Gramophone.

[Barbirollians]

I’m very lucky in living in a city where there are copious number of high quality classical cds to be found for a song in the many charity shops Edinburgh has to offer. What I love doing is looking up the reviews of my latest finds in the Gramophone’s search engine. Very often, the reviewers feelings about a disc absolutely chime with my opinions except the writers are are able to articulate their feelings much more succinctly than I could ever manage.

I can absolutely remember my first encounter with Gramophone when I stumbled across it in my local library. AT LAST, here was an organ that spoke to me and explained why recording A was better than B except that C was of historic value and should be heard. It’s been a great joy in my life and I have learned so much from Gramophone.

My first copy was bought at Sheffield Station from the old John Menzies kiosk on Platform 1 in Feb 1986 - remember it vividly. I have been reading it ever since though I did stop for a couple of years during James Inverne's disastrous period as editor .

[silvestrione]

It's much the same here in France, the equivalent magazine DIAPASON tends to favour French artists.

I'm due over in the UK next week, so for old times sake will probably buy the Centenary Edition, though I terminated my subscription years ago when I discovered the much -lamented International Record Review.
Stunned to see that the cover price is now almost ten pounds!!

Special price for this extended edition surely, though I don't have an older copy to hand to check.

[Wolfram]

I know that they are long since gone now, but I still miss the quarterly retrospect features; they were always a very useful follow up to the first review.

[Petrushka]

Special price for this extended edition surely, though I don't have an older copy to hand to check.

The normal cover price is £6.95 and the centenary edition, which is much larger, has a cover price of £9.95.

[Lordgeous]

In my late teens I was given a huge number of Gramophone Mags dating back to the '30s, '40s and 50s. How I wish I hadn't had to dispose of them, moving, lack of space etc, but at least its all been digitised by the publishers.

Snce then I've subscibed intermittently, also had a number of my own productions reviewed within (generally favourably!) but also followed other review sources and somehow feel that it's not quite the 'bible' it used to be (Hurwitz is somewhat scathing about it, but he would be, wouldn't he!).

Nevertheless, deserved birthday greeting Gramophone - our musical lives would have been poorer without you.

[RichardB]

It's much the same here in France, the equivalent magazine DIAPASON tends to favour French artists.

As do, respectively, Luister in the Netherlands and Rondo in Germany. Fanfare in the USA is a slightly different case in that anyone can get a good review there if they pay for it!

The 50th anniversary edition of Gramophone was one of the first ones I read. I learned a great deal about music from it before the inevitable dumbing down set in.