King penguin

The Penguin guides have been with us for so long that it comes as something of a surprise to find the latest incarnation stamped in silver on the cover as only the '30th anniversary edition'. In fact, the series had an earlier existence as the Stereo record guide from 1960 until 1975, when Penguin took over publication; its venerable trio of reviewers—Ivan March, Edward Greenfield and Robert Layton—have now been writing together for some four decades.

From the dawn of commercial recordings for domestic use at the end of the 19th century, there were concerns about the duplication of repertory. Initially some collectors hoped for breadth rather than depth—all of Haydn's quartets, rather than half-a-dozen competing versions of 'The Lark'—but technological problems, artist-led choice of repertory and economic rivalry meant that it was soon necessary to review new material and judge it against existing recordings (and indeed, live performances). This was the origin of Gramophone magazine in 1922, later followed by other publications with different writers and different perspectives. However, the market was not so vast that comprehensive coverage could not at least be attempted, and Edward Sackville-West and Desmond Shawe-Taylor's weighty Record guide of 1951 did a sound job. But the ever-expanding World encyclopedia of recorded music of 1952 showed which way the wind was blowing, with star conductors all wishing to immortalize their readings of the great classics. Even after the explosion onto the market of the LP and of stereo—another opportunity to remake recordings—brief reviews of almost everything in the mainstream classical repertory were possible under one cover, and the very first Penguin guide achieved this.

The arrival of quadrophony and the audiocassette, later followed by video, CD, DVD and SACD, put a severe strain on the one-volume format—a glance at the pages of the current REDMuze catalogue shows as many as a hundred competing versions of the most popular pieces—and the Penguin guide has had to become much more selective over the past decades. Reflecting this selectivity—poorer recordings are excluded—and also the overall rise in the technical and musical quality of recordings, the modern-day incarnation of the Guide appears relatively generous in its opinions. How one misses those damning reviews headed by just one star, and that in brackets! Of the 20 sets of Brandenburg Concertos cited, for example, all are *** or **(*), and one (the Freiburg Baroque Orchestra, on DVD) merits a coveted Rosette. The Oxford Camerata's SACD of Tallis's Spem in alium (Naxos) is given an unprecedented four stars.

The original panel of writers included the late Denis Stevens, ensuring some well-informed (if occasionally eccentric) coverage of the burgeoning field of early music. Since then, the current panel—whose core interests focus on more recent periods, especially orchestral music, 20th-century Scandinavia and opera—have wrestled with the emergence of historically informed performance. Harnoncourt's early recordings were accorded a somewhat dusty reception, but his later Beethoven and Dvořák (for example) have encouraged March and his colleagues to listen again to those pioneering Bach discs with kinder ears. The introduction to the Leonhardt/Harnoncourt Teldec cantata series (p.81) repeats the three-decade-old caveat as to 'a certain want of rhythmic freedom and some expressive caution' (typical Penguin-speak) but now adds more positive comments regarding the sense of musical discovery, the quality of the transfers and the acoustics. However, with an underlying sense of musical schizophrenia—trying to see the good in all—Karl Richter's and Fritz Werner's often-turgid 1960s and 70s Bach cantata recordings are given the same star rating. Although a tolerant perception of changing performance style and intention is admirable, it is to be doubted whether, if Masaaki Suzuki's well-reviewed and stylish BIS cycle is a 'very credible first choice' for this repertory, then Richter's markedly different performances can be seen as other than heavy-handed and insensitive. One simply cannot...