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Customer Reviews of Fanfare

Fanfare and I are now celebrating our 20th anniversary.
I have been collecting classical music recordings, now, for nearly a half-century, beginning in the mid-50s (my high school years) with a few monophonic LPs, and even the odd 45 or two: basically, whatever my "walking-around" money was able to cover. Once I was in college, with the sorts of interpersonal interactions that such "close living" encourages, my record collecting became both more varied and more frenetic. And I can identify those college years with the introduction of stereophonic recordings. It was also at this time that I discovered the first two monthly magazines having classical music recording reviews: High Fidelity and HiFi Review (later, Stereo Review).

For the most part, these two magazines (and a few others long fallen by the wayside) covered my music-buying needs for nearly three decades. But, in early 1983, when the CD was launched, I began a re-rationalizing of music purchases, thanks to the permanence of the CD medium.

Enter Fanfare, nearly exactly 20 years ago as I write this. CDs were finally making a big impact on the domestic music industry. (My early CD acquisitions had been from overseas sources, where the CD launch was several months ahead of the domestic launch.) Record stores were stocking new CD titles like mad. And one such store, specializing in classical music, had "retail" copies of Fanfare for sale at the check-out counter. So I bought a copy, along with several CDs.

It turns out that that was both the first and the last such over-the-counter copy of Fanfare that I purchased. The content of that first copy of Fanfare was so incredible that I've been a subscriber ever since. There were so many reviews, so many meaningful interviews with musicians and record label executives, and so many advertisements for this new music medium that I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. (Oh, I'd tried other music review sources as well, many of them, such as CD Reviews, now long gone. Others, such as Gramophone and the British Penguin Guide, seemed too parochial for me. And Fanfare's main competitor over the years, the American Record Guide, just seemed too biased by the publisher's individualistic tastes.)

The average size of a current semi-monthly copy of Fanfare (which is a signal event each time it turns up in my mailbox) is smaller than it once was, thanks to the problems the music industry is presently going through. Whereas it once used to take me the full two months to totally digest its cover-to-cover contents, just in time for the next isssue to show up, now it takes me somewhat less. But it is still the best bargain around for the serious music lover, and it is still the best single source for the widest variety of reliable opinions on music and recording releases. ("Reliable" opinions don't necessarily imply opinions with which one agrees; no one can or will agree with all reviewers or critics. But they DO mean that, once one becomes familiar with the scopes and tastes of individual reviewers, those reviewers' opinions are accurate predictors of one's expectations.)

Over the years, Fanfare has had some of the very best music opinion writers on its staff of reviewers, reading like a "Who's Who" of the field. It still does, and many of these reviewers have been with Fanfare for a long time. While I have a "mind of my own," I nonetheless can rely on these reviewers for their thoughtful analyses.

I guess my favorite feature of Fanfare is the annual (November/December) "Wish List" issue, in which each reviewer sets out his or her five most-wanted recordings of the year. I find it fascinating to compare my own "wish list" to theirs, even though our tastes may vary dramatically. This feature, probably more than any other, has led me to explore new repertoire and artists that I might otherwise have ignored.

And, finally, Fanfare has a nicely liberal attitude toward publishing readers' letters and comments. I've had a few of my own published, and can even state that, in at least one instance, my thoughts on a particular recording has had the effect of changing a reviewer's mind from a postion he previously had held.

My hat is off to Joel Flegler, the publisher of Fanfare, whose unvarying vision and open-mindedness regarding his reviewing staff over a quarter-century has made this journal the benchmark of the music-reviewing field. Thanks, Joel!

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The most reliable American classical CD magazine
I've been a subscriber to Fanfare for many years and have come to regard it as the most reliable of the two comprehensive American classical CD magazines (the other being the American Record Guide). Its reviews are more scholarly than those of the ARG and tend to be longer, including more detail, more extensive comparisons with other recordings and the like. The writing style is more standard. It has a lively letters section and runs very interesting interviews with musicians as well as reviews of live performances here and abroad. I subscribe to both, but tend to pay more attention to Fanfare.