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Publisher: Haymarket Magazines
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The Best We Have (2007-07-15)
Gramophone is simply the very best musical magazine we have at the moment for information about artists, and other news in the musical world. This, of course, includes new releases, Editor’s Picks, and reviews, etc. I doubt it will be bested for a very long time, if ever. I heartily recommend this great great magazine to everyone/anyone with any level of love for music, and seeking information on music related items. When subscribing, make SURE to do this one, the one with the CD every month, instead of just the magazine!

BUT, truthfully, I still miss High Fidelity and Stereo Review magazines from years ago…they, dollar for dollar, gave the most information, and their articles were more “timely delivered”, if you will, than this magazine, imported as it were, from England. ~operabruinSinking fast as a reliable guide to recordings (2007-03-14)
I don’t know if James Jolly and James Inverne are the same person; the former used to edit this magazine and now the latter does that. In my opinion, the direction Gramophone is pursuing now is less involvement with passing on pertinent information about new recordings and increased involvement about world musical developments and technology including downloading classical music. For me, this is a significant step backward.

Most distressing to me is the shallow nature of most CD reviews in this magazine. While it continues to supply one feature per issue on an individual work, and makes recommendations on all the recordings ever made of that work, its average review is about 4 paragraphs duration. In addition, many Gramophone reviewers seem more interested in their flowery writing style than in telling you anything about what’s going on in the music. The reviews in the “North American” pages of the magazine are almost entirely on recordings of minor repertoire, often by composers of little or no importance to the average reader-buyer-collector. And Gramophone’s “CD-Rom”, a CD with a talky interview of a performer and some bleeding chunks from new CDs…well, I throw that thing away when I get it each month.

This is not to say Gramophone is failing; it still does many things well. There are still more pages of color advertising in it carrying information about new releases than in any competitive magazine. It still carries some of its better longstanding assessments such as “Replay”, where one of its senior critics re-reviews older CDs. It lists every new CD and DVD available that month in North America (maybe) and England (more likely) by label and performer. I have, in the past, located CDs of interest reading this listing. And every issue talks about the growing number of downloads available and includes a calendar of upcoming worldwide musical events of interest. Gramophone also has an outstanding Web page where you can register free of cost to search its inventory of reviews going back to the 1980s. It’s called Gramophile; it’s great when it works or isn’t undergoing a rebuild, which happnes a lot.

Yet, for me, far too many pages in each issue of Gramophone are dedicated to glossy interviews with musicians (rather like hearing athletes talk about themselves in Sports Illustrated), features stories about music in cities or nations (the current issue proposes all the great composers and musicians will henceforth be coming from China), regular columns by people with no special message whose interests don’t parallel mine, and pages of reviews of equipment that I am neither going to buy nor have interest in. Where once this magazine concentrated on reviews of new releases, that no longer seems the central issue.

These debits do not begin to express my personal dismay of the magazine’s ridiculous “awards” issue, where its editor essentially handpicks the best CDs of the year. While I have respect for the individual opinions of reviewers who listen to hundreds of new CDs each year (every magazine does that) it is hard to get too involved when the editor suggests Claudio Abbado’s DG recording of the Mahler Symphony No. 6 was the best recording of 2006. I may have bought 75 CDs that year and listened to another two dozen borrowed from the library, including that one, and at least a dozen of them were superior to that by my reckoning. Gramophone’s annual awards issue is not as bad as the Grammy awards but it is close.

I re-upped to this magazine most currently because they offered me a special price, something like $55 for 13 issues, a big discount from their newsstand price of $9 per issue. I find I can get through everything I’m interested in every issue in a day or two, after which I give the issue to a friend at work. Further, each CD I’ve purchased recently based on a review or recommendation by this magazine has not been worth my money. I have sold all of them to second hand shops or given them away to friends.

The bottom line is I don’t find this magazine credible any longer. I think its direction is in motion away from my interests and I have no intention or renewing my subscription when this one terminates. I already got a 50 percent offer to BBC Music Magazine which I took in part because their free monthly CD is of some value since it is an entire performance of a single work or, sometimes, of an entire concert.

For people wanting information on new releases and sound judgment on how, where and when to buy music on CD or download, I recommend you subscribe to either or both of American Record Guide and Fanfare, two American publications that give longer reviews of new CDs and usually compare them to other recordings you either own or have heard of. Both these magazines, which are published bimonthly, carry extraneous interviews and information about concerts, but their main course is reviewing musical releases and their annual cost is lower than the 50 percent deal I got from this magazine.Finest classical music publication (2006-04-01)
This is the finest popular publication for classical music, and it is a wonderful complement to more serious publications such as Fanfare. Highly recommended for the collector, both amateur and serious alike.

The CD that accompanies each issue is a marvelous addition. Inevitably I am exposed to new artists or performances on the CD that I wouldn’t otherwise consider simply by reading the magazine. The combination of the magazine and CD is a great gift for young people as well. The CD exposes them to new music (and can be downloaded to their MP3 players!) while the glossy magazine gives them access to thoughtful insight and analysis.

And yes, the magazine does have the ads from the major companies and their blockbuster stars. But I also enjoy reading the specialist ads and in so doing learn of new, unique music appearing on disc.The best, for many reasons… (2005-01-01)
This might sound strange at first, but I confess: Of course I subscribe to The Gramophone for its critically perceptive and unfailingly well-written reviews and features, but perhaps what I love best about this magazine are the copious and informative record-label advertisements! Just leafing through the Nov. or Dec. 2004 edition, I see full-page and even two-page spreads showing:

* All the lastest issues in the Gramophone Awards series — a series of mid-priced reissues by Universal (Philips, Decca, and DG) of recordings that have won a Gramophone Award.

* All the latest issues in the Rosette Collection, another series of mid-priced reissues by Universal of recordings that have been awarded a rosette by the Penguin Guide.

* All the latest releases by Hyperion, DG, Sony, RCA, Philips, EMI, Virgin, Naxos, Naive, Classics for Pleasure, BIS, Chandos, CPO, MD&G, etc. etc. etc.

In other words, if you’re a fairly assiduous collector trying to stay abreast of all the latest recordings, you will find The Gramophone invaluable and indeed unsurpassed in this respect — both for new releases and reissues. And the ads not only give you catalog numbers and release dates; they also inform you which recordings have won which awards and garnered accolades from which critics.

Browsing the ads in The Gramophone every month is *the* best way to see all the new releases — not even the most well-stocked classical-specialist CD shop would carry all these titles. And what’s more, many many desirable classical CDs are *never* issued domestically in North America, so how else are you going to find out about what’s available in Europe?

Furthermore, every issue contains a 4- or 5-page section called “New Releases,” which lists very specific product info on every CD issued that month by over 100 record labels (!!) — and that’s no exaggeration because I actually counted them.

New developments I’ve noticed since Gramophone’s significant makeover in the Nov 2004 issue: Gone is Robert Layton (to BBC Music Magazine), apparently traded for Jeremy Nicholas (from BBC Music Magazine) — these are new developments, aren’t they? So it is no longer true to say that all three Penguin editors write for The Gramophone: with Layton gone, now only Greenfield and March do.

(I will take this opportunity to say that I still miss Baroque critic nonpareil Nicholas Anderson. His moving from Gramophone to BBC Music Magazine is the reason I started reading that mag in the first place.)

Finally, by way of rebutting the previous reviews on this page:

As you can see from the above list of record labels that advertise in The Gramophone, it is no longer true (if indeed it ever was) that the magazine kowtows to the “major” labels. Fact is, The Gramophone’s critics recommend as many or more recordings on such “indie” labels as Naive, Harmonia Mundi, Hyperion, Chandos, MD&G, CPO, Capriccio, Glossa, Linn, Avie, LSO Live, Telarc, etc. etc. as they do for the “major” labels: Sony, RCA, Warner, and Universal.

And it is certainly *not* true that the next quality recording is more likely to emerge as an MP3 file from Russia than as a new release from a “major” record company — and the reason for this is simple: The record labels — all of them, including the indies — have today’s greatest artists under exclusive recording contracts. Until the likes of Vengerov, Perahia, Manze, Biondi, Minkowski, Harnoncourt, Jacobs, and a hundred others are free agents making their own recordings, the record labels will remain as relevant — nay, indispensable — as ever. And you won’t find the VPO, BPO, Lahti SO, or Concertgebouw popping up on an obscure MP3 file either! And therefore, The Gramophone’s “business model” — earning revenue from record-label advertising — is hardly obsolete. Quite the contrary, and moreover The Gramophone has been quick to embrace “indie” labels such as Harmonia Mundi (the mag’s “Label of the Year” last year) and ventures such as the LSO and SFO issuing their own in-house recordings.

In fact, the reviewer below who predicts the imminent demise of The Gramophone (and by extension all classical mags, including Fanfare, Diapason, and BBC Music Magazine) sounds much like the Gramophone-resenters at Classicstoday.com, who have been making the same claims for quite some time. Such resenters and their ilk have apparently never learned this simple lesson: You cannot build yourself up simply by tearing others down. (Attention Classicstoday.com: Want to earn some critical clout? Then learn to write, for crying out loud… Take Hurwitz, for example, who routinely exclaims: “This is the best recording of X or Y, period.” Period? This is supposed to enlighten and persuade me? But pardon me, I rant and digress.)

Finally, even if we assume for the sake of argument that The Gramophone and Fanfare offer the reader an equal amount of equally well-written reviews — and I’m really not convinced this is true — but assuming this to be so, I give the nod to The Gramophone for all of the above reasons. Fanfare doesn’t offer the superabundance of information about the copious amount of new releases and reissues, and therefore isn’t as useful a tool for staying current with *all* the new releases. And I must admit — call me superficial if you will, but I must admit that Fanfare’s lack of production values makes it relatively unappealing. In fact, based on its appearance and feel, it reminds me of a slightly larger-sized version of Reader’s Digest. I freely admit that I love the tactile and visual qualities of The Gramophone — the large glossy pages and photos and graphics and ads all make for very pleasurable perusal. By contrast, Fanfare can seem like an underground newsletter.

I do believe that having more than one critical perspective is a good thing, and while I would certainly not discourage anyone from subscribing to Fanfare, I still think that The Gramophone is the obvious first choice.New and improved: ‘The’ Gramophone. (2004-12-27)
Effective with the November, 2004 issue, Gramophone has undergone a number of changes in design and editorial content, all for the better. One of these changes, perhaps the most minor of all, is the reversion to its original title, ‘The’ Gramophone. The other changes are more substantial, hardly cosmetic, especially for North American readers.

One of the more notable new features is an article devoted to “The Event” (great musical events in history). For my money, Gramophone could hardly have done better than to feature the September 12, 1910 première performance of Gustav Mahler’s 8th Symphony (”The Symphony of A Thousand,” according to Emil Guttmann, the promoter engaged by Mahler for the première). If I had just *one* performance to pick, were I able to turn the clock back, it would unquestionably have been this one. The anonymous writer has done a competent and reasonably accurate and complete job recapturing the excitement of an event which was talked about for decades afterward by those who were there.

Another new feature is titled “The Experts’ Expert,” in which well-known musicians of today talk about their own historical favorites for their instrument(s). For the November, 2004 issue, several famous violinists (plus Lara St. John, who falls into a different category entirely) praise their personal heroes. While not unanimous, it is telling that Anne-Sophie Mutter, Sarah Chang, Julia Fischer and two others identify David Oistrakh as their personal inspiration.

Still a third new feature, “Gramophone Classics,” is a roundtable discussion of historic performances (one each month) by the Gramophone reviewers. For this kick-off month, the historic performance is that of the complete cycle of Dvorak symphonies by the late István Kertész and the London Symphony Orchestra. Now nearly forty years old, this is a boxed set of the cycle that I had favorably reviewed myself, quite some time back. (Interestingly, a nice photograph of Kertész conducting the LSO shows that [at least] the principal flutist was playing a wooden flute, an advantage usually conceded to Czech musicians over their counterparts elsewhere in performing Dvorak’s symphonies.)

The balance of Gramophone, aside from minor cosmetic layout changes, is pretty much as it had been in recent years. There is the usual North American supplement/insert, covering events, performers and releases specific to this market; this is the version American subscribers receive and which is available in American book and magazine stores. The monthly reviews section is always of interest because it includes reviews of releases often available in the U.K. (and the continent) before they are available domestically. There is the obligatory “free” CD that includes excerpts from the Editors’ Choice of Best Discs of the Month (something which I tend to ignore, if only because excerpts can only give an incomplete picture of matters). And, finally, always of interest to this semi-gearhead are the audio equipment reviews, if only to point out the differences between American and British gearheads.

The main purpose of such a publication is, of course, to provide critical commentary on new classical music releases. In this respect, I find the U.S.-published Fanfare to be a more reliable source of information than the U.K.-published Gramophone. Chalk it up to “across the pond” differences in both repertoire and opinion, if you like. Nevertheless, the improvements that take us from “Gramophone” to “The Gramophone” are enough for me to bump what might have been a 3-star review to one that is a solid 4 stars.

Bob Zeidler 

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