The Insider's Guide to Classical Recordings, From the Host of The Record Shelf, a Highly Opinionated, Irreverent, and Selective Guide to What's Good and What's Not

by Jim Svejda

For hundreds of thousands of loyal listeners throughout the United States, Jim Svejda's weekly radio program The Record Shelf is not to be missed. Now, this amusing and irreverent guide captures the special flavor of Svejda's unique program. Without fear or favor, he recommends his choices of CDs and cassettes for hundreds of compositions from the standard, and not-so-standard, fare. You'll enjoy reading this wryly humorous and candid collection time and time again.

"No one on the air treats both composers and performers with such personal devotion or has such a fine ear for differences in inflections and interpretations."

—New York Times

"The best, most searching and fascinating review of music around."

—Dudley Moore

"If you want to expand or enrich your musical horizons, this book is indispensable. No matter how sophisticated you may be about the world of classical music, Jim Svejda's book will introduce you to new performances and perspectives."

—Michael Medved, PBS's Sneak Preview

"Great fun to read."

—Sir André Preven

Genres: Music

864 pages, Paperback

First published February 24, 1999

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

At the time it was published (1999), this was probably the best beginner-to-intermediate guide to classical music. It's important to identify the best music, and equally important, good performances of it. This book saves you much time and money. Classical music is easily ruined by inferior performances, and there are many of those for each fine one.

Twenty years later, you will not go wrong with the recommended music and performances. But there are now two major problems. First, there are now better performances of many of the works. Second, many of the recommended recordings are no longer available. Still, Svejda's selection of the best works is still an excellent guide, and with some research on the web you may identify fine available performances of them.

If you are just beginning, you want to try to discover what styles of music you like, so as to narrow your choices.

Classicfm.com has a list of 100 good choices
https://www.classicfm.com/music-news/... .

NPR.org has 50
https://www.npr.org/series/99866406/t... .

Classicalcandor.blogspot.com has an extensive list
https://classicalcandor.blogspot.com/... .

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a must have for lovers of classical music. Mr. Svejda has been involved with classical music for a long time and is an expert. He runs a program at USC radio called the Record Shelf that can be heard online and the radio.

This book is vast in its coverage of composers and recordings, but gramophone does cover more. It is a prejudice book in that Jim favors older recordings, along with certain conductors, and of course legendary recordings.

This book is more than 10 years old so it lacks a lot of great new stuff, but still not to be missed. He will write about a composer and usually list their best stuff and the recordings he likes of each, adding to it his wit and charm. I disagree with him a some things but I have also built most of my collection around this book and have memorized a lot of this book because of the numerous times I've read it. When I think of how much money I've spent because of this book I grimace, but at the same time I've received much joy from the pen of Mr. Svejda and the incredible pieces of music he writes of.