Gramophone at 100

[gradus]

The Gramophone is a musical institution with all that implies. I first bought it in April 1960 and kept buying until around 20 years ago when I disposed of them all along with an identical run of Hi Fi news and a somewhat shorter run of Audio and Record Review (anyone remember it?).

[MickyD]

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

Ah, interesting, even though I stopped buying it some years ago, I did think that seemed a very hefty price hike!
I'll try and buy it when I come over to the UK next week.

[richardfinegold]

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.

Fanfare tends to run multiple reviews of the same recording. It isn't unusual to see two reviewers pan a recording and have the third wax lyrical over it. Guess which review gets quoted in the promo for the recording?

[RichardB]

It isn't unusual to see two reviewers pan a recording and have the third wax lyrical over it. Guess which review gets quoted in the promo for the recording?

When I said you can pay for good reviews in Fanfare I meant it literally. That's part of their business model.

[richardfinegold]

When I said you can pay for good reviews in Fanfare I meant it literally. That's part of their business model.

I realize that. Usually the negative reviews are the one that I choose to believe and the positive ones are there for the schill value. The key is the presence of advertising in proximity to the review. If there isn’t any, one assumes the readers are speaking their mind. If the advertising is there, and two of the reviews are negative and one is glowing (and provides good advertising copy ) one assumes the editor coerced a reviewer into a rave. This elevates “reading between the lines” to a whole new level.

[RichardB]

Usually the negative reviews are the one that I choose to believe and the positive ones are there for the schill value.

Which makes one wonder why people bother paying for the reviews! Although something like this goes on less visibly in all review magazines, which is one reason why the Gramophone tends to favour British performers. When I was reviewing for The Wire many years ago, I was informed that I'd better not write anything negative about releases on certain labels on account of the amount of advertising space they bought in the magazine's pages. It was an experience that led me not to place too much trust in reviews from then on. But nowadays, as has been pointed out before, the existence of streaming services means that you never need to make a purchase on the basis of a reviewer's opinion. For example, I've found it very enlightening to check out recordings of Janáček's first quartet on the basis of mentions here (which I'm assuming aren't the result of commercial pressures!). So I don't feel the need to wade through all the stuff in the Gramophone that I find annoying, which is most of it. One's mileage may vary of course.

[gurnemanz]

While a student 50 years ago I started buying every issue of two magazines, Gramophone and Private Eye, and later took out subscriptions to both. I still subscribe to Private Eye but gave up buying Gramophone in 2007. I had kept all issues to be able to refer back to them using the Gramophone catalogue which included the date of the original Gramophone review. One reason for giving up was that the Gram catalogue a) stopped giving a reference to the review date and b) became very expensive. Since I was now never looking at them and they took up a lot of space, I dumped the whole lot - somewhat reluctantly, since I had gained so much pleasure and insight from the mag over the decades. For nostalgic reasons I kept a few copies as souvenirs - including the first two, Oct and Nov 1971 (price 15p) and the last one, Feb 2007 (price £4.40).

I shall certainly buy the 100 year issue but otherwise I find I can happily get by using the internet and of course this forum for reviews and comment.

[french frank]

on the basis of mentions here (which I'm assuming aren't the result of commercial pressures!).

Where do you think we get our revenue from? [Heh, heh, only joking . We keep the forum as far as possible free from all advertising and spam]

[Ein Heldenleben]

Which makes one wonder why people bother paying for the reviews! Although something like this goes on less visibly in all review magazines, which is one reason why the Gramophone tends to favour British performers. When I was reviewing for The Wire many years ago, I was informed that I'd better not write anything negative about releases on certain labels on account of the amount of advertising space they bought in the magazine's pages. It was an experience that led me not to place too much trust in reviews from then on. But nowadays, as has been pointed out before, the existence of streaming services means that you never need to make a purchase on the basis of a reviewer's opinion. For example, I've found it very enlightening to check out recordings of Janáček's first quartet on the basis of mentions here (which I'm assuming aren't the result of commercial pressures!). So I don't feel the need to wade through all the stuff in the Gramophone that I find annoying, which is most of it. One's mileage may vary of course.

Amazing that they should be so explicit about it. I think in some ways with classical record reviewing it’s usually more subtle. As an editor you ensure that a major Karajan release in the mid seventies for example gets reviewed by a Karajan fan. It always surprised me how often fairly average opera releases were praised to the skies - in some ways they still are though these days they are fairly rare.

[Pulcinella]

Where do you think we get our revenue from? [Heh, heh, only joking . We keep the forum as far as possible free from all advertising and spam]

Hush!
You don't want everyone to know that you write nice comments on my posts only because I've offered to use my Co-op dividend points to help buy your purple sprouting broccoli, do you?

[french frank]

Hush!
You don't want everyone to know that you write nice comments on my posts only because I've offered to use my Co-op dividend points to help buy your purple sprouting broccoli, do you?

[MickyD]

While a student 50 years ago I started buying every issue of two magazines, Gramophone and Private Eye, and later took out subscriptions to both. I still subscribe to Private Eye but gave up buying Gramophone in 2007. I had kept all issues to be able to refer back to them using the Gramophone catalogue which included the date of the original Gramophone review. One reason for giving up was that the Gram catalogue a) stopped giving a reference to the review date and b) became very expensive. Since I was now never looking at them and they took up a lot of space, I dumped the whole lot - somewhat reluctantly, since I had gained so much pleasure and insight from the mag over the decades. For nostalgic reasons I kept a few copies as souvenirs - including the first two, Oct and Nov 1971 (price 15p) and the last one, Feb 2007 (price £4.40).

I shall certainly buy the 100 year issue but otherwise I find I can happily get by using the internet and of course this forum for reviews and comment.

I could have written pretty much all of this, snap!

[jayne lee wilson]

As I've often said, Gramophone itself is very aware of how streaming removes the need for writers to offer only a buyers guide - Cullingford says so again in his April editorial; it's there if you need it.
But other opinions from experienced reviewers and listeners (we all become reviewers as soon as we pass musical comment on this or any other forum; experience, wisdom and insight, not to mention good writing, are much rarer commodities) are inherently interesting, as is the chance to look at several decades of how a given recording was commented upon; the changing view of an artist as it evolves through time.

Gramophone has always been about far, far more than reviews; this was actually the problem with IRR, that reviews were almost all it had to offer; features were few and far. Some months could be pretty dull.
I still discover plenty thanks to the magazine, especially in the monthly Contemporary Composers feature, which often has figures I didn't know or not know much, about; offers a listening guide....

I would remind anyone who gave up on the magazine a few years back that a subscription does give you access to the archive of every single issue, and very rewarding it can be. I usually find myself delving around in there several times a week; a quite unique resource of high quality writing.

[Lordgeous]

Its a shame you just can't purchase access to the archives - they've been very useful, and interesting, over the years.

[Master Jacques]

Its a shame you just can't purchase access to the archives - they've been very useful, and interesting, over the years.

I am with you on that - the pre-millennial archive is fantastic. But given the unreliable quality and reduced wordage for their main drag reviews these days (and the growth in uncritical, lickspittle "features") I certainly would not buy the current product. They pay their standard reviewers virtually nothing these days, allow them very few words, and of course don't let them keep the CDs for resale (though companies still sometimes provide complimentary copies).

Given the declining reader base none of this is to be wondered at, of course; but how are the mighty fallen! A sad way to pass the 100 mark.