Product Description

Berlioz. Vaughan Williams. Schubert and Schumann. Mozart after the Jupiter Symphony, Bach beyond the Brandenburg Concertos, opera after The Magic Flute. In his informed and indispensible guide with over 157,000 copies in print, National Public Radio's Ted Libbey takes listeners by the hand through the classical repertory to build a music library. For the second edition, with five years of new performances to consider, five years of new releases to review, and five years of reissues to re-evaluate-the author has completely revised and updated the book. While sticking to the essential 300 works, there are now one-third new selections and reviews, and a 50% change in discography to keep all suggested CDs up to date. The NPR Guide tp Building a Classical CD Collection will make every music lover's core collection complete.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #158990 in Books
• Published on: 1999-08-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 536 pages

Ingram
This indispensable book features information on more than 300 essential operas, concertos, and symphonies, with sidebars and anecdotal material on composers, performers, and recordings. Ted Libbey is the classical music commentator for National Public Radio.

From the Back Cover
Where Do You Go After Mozart's Jupiter? After Bach's Brandenburg Concertos? After Beethoven's Third? In this informed and indispensable guide, now in a second edition featuring a hundred new recordings, National Public Radio's Ted Libbey takes you by the hand through the classical repertory and helps you build an essential CD collection. Not just another rating book, this is a foremost expert's thoughtful and entertaining appreciation--work by work, performer by performer, recording by recording--of the symphonies, concertos, chamber pieces, keyboard works, sacred works, and operas that belong in every music lover's library. It includes the core 20 works for starting out, recommendations especially suited for young listeners, and an appendix listing additional works, beyond those covered in the first edition, that the author feels most passionate about. PRAISE FOR THE FIRST EDITION: "I have been lost in this book for a week...Libbey('s) comparisons are wonders of lucidity, differentiation, and those 'open ears' Rostropovich spoke of." --Chicago Tribune "An extensive guide and perfect companion to the basic classical repertory." --Digby Diehl, Playboy Magazine

About the Author
Ted Libbey is one of America's most highly regarded music critics. A former music critic for The New York Times, he is known to millions of NPR listeners as curator of the Basic Radio Library on "Performance Today." Mr. Libbey is now Director of Media Arts of the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Rockville, Maryland.

Customer Reviews

A very helpful reference with interesting commentary.
This is an excellent guide for "Building a Classical CD Collection".

The choices of selections and specific recordings, and the organization, writing, and extras are all first rate.
The book is divided into six sections based on types of music (not era's or composers). Although the first section is 200
pages, many of the composers are introduced there so the book is reasonably balanced.

A typical four pages consists of a bio on the composer (adding a real sense of history), a description of a selection, then
a few performances with commentary on
each recording as well.

The author's picks include many from the Berlin and Vienna orchestras, and several from London, Montreal, Chicago,
New York, Boston, Cleveland, Amsterdam and Columbia. He chose Karajan recordings, as well as Bernstien, Dutoit,
Colin Davis, Gardiner, Previn, Walter, Szell, and Marriner. Performers mentioned include Rubinstien, Ashkenazy,
Pearlman, Perahia, Mutter, and Schiff.

There are also plenty of interesting short stories and pictures about composers, conductors, orchestras, and performers
added in the generous margins. Another helpful section placed at the end, gives suggestions for: beginning a collection,
teenagers, special occasions, and other favorites of the author. After this, there is a helpful index of composers and
performers.
If you don't like having only a few recommendations for each work, getting a Penguin or Gramophone guide may
help. And of course: **read the reviews at Amazon.com!**

The book covers most of the "essential works" extremely well, but with 350 selections, it seems that a few other works
could have been included:
Vivaldi concertos, Sibelius Finlandia and no.1, Rachmaninov piano no.3, Bruckner no.4, Handel concerto grossi,
Schubert no.5 and string quartet no.14, Ravel La Valse, Mendelssohn no.3, more Schumann, Gershwin piano concerto
in F, Schoenberg Moonstruck Pierrotierrot, and the Mahler eighth.

Note to the author and publisher: I would welcome updates every five? years or so, to keep up with all of the new
recordings.

A great book, but obviously not for everyone.
'The NPR Guide to Building a Classical CD Collection : The 350 Essential Works' is a great book, but obviously not for everyone. As the title suggests, it is recommending only the 350 "essential" works, so obviously it cannot list everything that one might want. Consequently, it is unreasonable to suppose that some worthwhile pieces have not been left out (Libbey says as much himself, as he regretted not being able to include more CDs that he likes). And certainly, people might disagree about which pieces are essential. In fact, I think he should have included:

Pachelbel: Canon, etc; Fasch / Paillard, André ASIN: B000005EDJ

And:

Bach, Schumann, Chopin / Mieczyslaw Horszowski ASIN: B000005J0V

(You can find these CDs at this site by searching for the ASIN numbers, leaving off "ASIN:"................

And I even disagree with some of his choices (e.g., I like the digital Karajan recording of Holst's Planets better than one that he recommends). Obviously, different people have different tastes. That said, however, Libbey's book has been invaluable for adding to my collection of CDs. His recommendations have exposed me to some great performances of pieces I would not otherwise consider, and even when I disagree with him, his choices are still good (at least among the dozens that I have heard).

He also includes a wide variety of works, so that a collection based on his recommendations will be quite broad, which, again, may not be to everyone's taste (e.g., if you don't like opera, though obviously you could just ignore his section on operas, or if you don't like 20th century music, you could just ignore his reviews of 20th century music).

If you already have great performances of the basic repertoire, then this book is not for you. But if you do not (which includes everyone who does not already have hundreds of classical CDs), then this is a book which can help you expand your collection to include all of the basic works with excellent performances.

Furthermore, the layout of the text is the easiest to read of any of the review books that I have seen. If you plan on reading the book, this matters.

Oh, and buy the two CDs I recommend above, as Libbey has not included those particular gems.

for Libbey, the 20th Century isn't classical yet
I found this book useful as a preliminary guide to some of the great 18th and 19th century composers. But I was shocked and puzzled to find that there are very few entries for the entire 20th century -- not much beyond Stravinsky, Bartok and Shostakovich. Caveat emptor! I suggest that a more accurate designation might be "...Building A Classical CD Collection, Volume 1, From the Baroque to the Romantic." If Libbey doesn't know or care, someone more knowledgable should put together a Volume 2 on the 20th Century. And if NPR doesn't know or care either (the classical program was just eliminated in Salt Lake City!), then a volume on 20th century music remains vitally needed, as no such thing currently exists!

We need better terminology. "Classical" music can refer both to Mozart and Hayden, the short period sandwiched between Baroque (Bach, Vivaldi) and Romantic (19th century), or, of course, it can refer to "the realm of elite composition and performance," and therefore be extended to more recent developments. There is simply no good term for music, using the second definition, of recent times, from Darmstadt and Cage to minimalism, the new complexity, and electronics. "New music"? "Contemporary classical"? Perhaps now that we're into the 21st century, the world can finally catch up with Boulez, Cage, Carter, Ligeti, Lutoslawski, Nono, Reynolds, Stockhausen, Xenakis, and the others under the heading "The 20th Century"!