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Customer Reviews of Gramophone - Incls Gramophone CD-Rom

The Best We Have
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! <
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>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. ~operabruin

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Sinking fast as a reliable guide to recordings
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. <
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>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. <
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>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. <
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>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. <
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>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. <
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>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. <
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>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. <
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>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.

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Finest classical music publication
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. <
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>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. <
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>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.