The New York Times Essential Library: Classical Music: A Critic's Guide to the 100 Most Important Recordings (The New...

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 384 pages
• Published by: Times Books
• Edition: 1st Edition August 2, 2004
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0805070702
• ASIN: B0013TH6EA
• Book Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Weighs: 15.2 ounces

From Publishers Weekly
It's always a tricky task to pick a list with as sweeping a title as this, but Kozinn, a music critic for the New York Times, has done a sterling job. Not only does he write concisely and informatively about the works in hand, offering an great potted History of the composer and his composition, but Kozinn also sets forth sound reasons why he has chosen the recording he has—and in most cases he offers recommended alternatives, too. His list contains most of the expected big guns in classical masterpieces, but with an very extended list of contemporary works as well—25% of the pieces he cites were written in the 20th century: Britten and Glass and Reich, of course, but also such lesser-known figures as Milton Babbitt and Gregorio Paniagua. In performance, he has soft spots for the work of Leonard Bernstein and George Szell, but also for Pierre Boulez as a conductor, and is a great admirer of Columbia's composer-as-conductor series featuring Stravinsky and Copland. Best of all—and to keep the arguments flowing—he offers at the end a list of another 100 discs almost as essential—and hints at many more. It's a treasure trove for record collectors—though they should be aware that Kozinn's choices do notinclude opera.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From Booklist
In introducing this volume of the New York Times Essential Library, Kozinn notes the quixotic nature of choosing the top 100 classical music recordings. Unlike jazz or rock, classical music is an interpretive and re-creational art. There is only one Kind of Blue; other recordings of its exact program don't diminish its definitiveness, for jazz is essentially individualistic and improvisatory. But, to cite Kozinn's example, the "definitive" recording of Bach's sonatas and partitas for solo violin can be Nathan Milstein's for the 1970s, Gidon Kremer's for the '80s, and Christian Tetzlaff's now; and none ever displaces the others. Kozinn's strategy for dealing with the fact that very different interpretations of the same music are equally "valid" is to opt generally for more recent recordings and to note often, within the context of appraising the pieces at hand and their composers, other fine versions of particular scores. Historically, Kozinn's selections span from the twelfth-century sacred songs of Hildegard of Bingen to masterpieces by a dozen living composers. An great book of its kind. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Reader Reviews
This review is from: The New York Times Essential Library: Classical Music: A Critic's Guide to the 100 Most Important Recordings (Paperback) I used to know a lot about classical music when I was younger, but I'd drifted into other kinds of music over the years. Now that I'm interested in getting reacquainted with the classics, I'm finding this book extremely useful and well-written. The author highlights 100 CDs he recommends and then in individual essays (each around 3-4 pages) talks about the pieces he chose, with background on the composer, the composition, and why he chose that particular recording. Often, he'll mention other excellent performances worth checking out. As an appendix, Mr. Kozinn included a supplemental list of the next 100 recordings he'd recommend, which he says are all worthy of inclusion in the main list. What impressed me most about the book is the overall balance of choices. First, between canonical choices and his more personal preferences--that's very appealing to me, because lots of people could throw together a list of the 100 most famous classical works, but it takes someone with real knowledge to dig deeper. Secondly, he chooses a nice range of music. Early music fans should be pleased, as well as fans of contemporary classics (like me), work by the minimalists like Adams, Glass and Reich, as well as new spiritual composers like Part, plus many I hadn't heard of before. But he also gives a lot of attention to the likes of Bach/Brahms/Beethoven/Mozart. I found this really useful as a companion to the NPR Guide to Building a Classical CD Collection. Comment | Permalink | (Report this)