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

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 excellent 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 unusually 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.

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 excellent book of its kind. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Book Description
A dazzling appraisal of the definitive classical music performances available today

For classical music lovers, there is nothing more beguiling and exciting than the range of technique and emotion that can capture or transform the great works in the hands of a conductor and musicians. But with hundreds of recordings released every year, discovering the jewels is a challenge, for newcomers as well as for connoisseurs.
New York Times classical music critic Allan Kozinn offers the ultimate collector's guide, packed with a rich history of the composers and performers who stir our souls. From Bach's eloquent Goldberg Variations performed by master pianist Glenn Gould at the beginning and end of his career in startlingly different interpretations, to a lyrical performance of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherezade conducted by Kiril Kondrashin shortly after his defection from the Soviet Union, Kozinn places each work in the greater context of musical development and stretches the listener's understanding of each pivotal composition. These original essays on the one hundred greatest recorded classical works provide both practical guidance for building a library and deep insight into the transcendent power of music itself.


About the Author
Allan Kozinn is a classical music critic for The New York Times. Before joining the staff of the Times in 1991, he was a contributing editor for the classical music magazines High Fidelity, Opus, and Keynote, and he was the music critic for The New York Observer. He lives in New York City.



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Kozinn, a classical music critic for the New York Times, presents his c hoices for the 100 most important classical recordings in roughly chronological order by composer/disc. Beginning with Hildegard of Bingen and ending with Bright Sheng, the entries include a two- to seven-page original essay on each CD, which offers information about the composer, the historical context, and the music. Some major composers garner more than one entry, but lesser-known composers like Agstin Mangore Barrios and Juan Crisostomo Arriaga are also listed. While most surveys of classical music recommend recordings, the work most similar to Kozinn's is Ted Libbey's The NPR Guide to Building a Classical CD Collection: The 350 Essential Works. Both books feature many of the same recordings, but Libbey's edges out Kozinn's in number of recordings, background information, organization, and layout. However, Kozinn has the advantage of five additional years of recording history from which to choose; he includes a further 100 selections in list form as well, bringing the total up to 200. Ultimately, libraries that own Libbey's book can hold off on Kozinn's, but those with comprehensive classical music collections may want to consider.-Bruce R. Schueneman, Texas A&M Univ. Lib., Kingsville Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.


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