Customer Reviews
An Excellent and Inspiring Guide 
2007-12-09
I hope that no potential readers were offput by the very silly and petty Publishers Weekly review. This is a very helpful and at times facinating guide to classical music and recorded music performance. Libbey's expertise and passion make for great reading. Very insightful and very helpful when searching for a good recording of a favorite piece.
A delightful experience for any classical music lover. 2007-06-24
"The NPR Listener's Encyclopedia of Classical Music" is a delightful combination reference book and video game for all classical music buffs. Besides its nearly 1,000 pages of listings, from Claudio Abbado to Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, the book gives you access to a page on the Naxos Music website which allows you to listen to more than 500 musical selections online. I just signed on to the page for the first time, and listened to the very first listed selection--John Adams' "Shaker Loops." I look forward to hours of fun with this wonderful new toy! I appreciate the breadth and depth of knowledge author Ted Libbey brings to the project, as well as his inclusion of favorites of mine who aren't necessarily well-known to today's listening public, such as the Danish tenor Aksel Schiotz. In his introduction, Libbey notes he tried to avoid the gaps and errors in such standard reference works as Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, and adds, "Doubtless there will be errors still, and for these I accept full responsibility." Alas, I have already caught him in two. The first is the listing of Beethoven's birthday as December 17, 1770, when even "Peanuts'" Schroeder and Lucy know that Beethoven was born on December 16. Of course, that could have been a printer's or proofreader's error, but the second mistake is more serious--when Libbey states that Vladimir Horowitz withdrew from the concert stage in 1953 in a severe depression over the suicide of his only daughter. Actually, Horowitz's daughter, Sonia, did not commit suicide until the 1970s (which caused Horowitz a second bout of severe depression); I'm not sure exactly what caused Horowitz's 1953 breakdown, but I had always understood that an addiction to prescription drugs was at least partly to blame. Nevertheless, these are minor caveats to an otherwise enjoyable and informative volume. Any classical music lover with computer access would be happy to own it.
A handy reference 2007-06-13
Don't get this if you are looking for an overview of music history, this is a reference book--exactly as advertised.
It comes with a login to naxos.com that allows you to listen to literally hundreds of hours of music from the naxos library for free! This is a tremendous value.
I was most impressed by the sheer amount of information--not just the historic information, even my favorite 20th and 21st century composers were given a fair amount of coverage.
NPR is better 2007-06-09
Couldn't choose between the NPR ecyclopedia and the Vantage Guide so bought both. The NPR book is younger, more detailed, more information on a wider variety of artists and composers and in my opinion ; much better.
NPR LIstener's Enclyclopedia of Classical Music 2007-06-08
Even for the true classic music afficiando, this is a helpful compendium of names and selections to use when purchasing albums or for general hands on reference.
The NPR Listener's Encyclopedia of Classical Music 
2007-01-17
A complete education in classical music, written with verve and wit. No music lover can pick up this one-volume compendium without becoming a more knowledgeable, discerning listener. • The
sonata form revealed, and why it's been deeply satisfying for three centuries. • What to listen for in
Brahms, a self-described Classicist who was one of music's great innovators
. • Pizzicato, fioritura, parlando, glissando. • The transformative power of
Toscanini–who earned more conducting the New York Philharmonic than his contemporary Babe Ruth made with the Yankees. • And throughout, more than 2,000 recommended recordings.
Log on and listen. Created with Naxos, the world's largest classical music label, the book includes a unique Web site featuring more than 500 examples cited in the text. Look up
barcarolle. First read about its swaying 6/8 meter and Venetian origins; then log on to the music Web site and hear it performed in Act IV of Offenbach's
Les contes d'Hoffmann. If that whets your curiosity about Offenbach, click to hear the cancan in his
La vie parisienne. All online samples are marked by an icon in the text.
Essential Reference for Classical Music Lovers 2007-01-14
This book contains almost everything you could want to know about classical music, the people up to the present, the instruments, the terms, and the music itself some of which can be accessed on line through a Naxos website, It is well illustrated and engagingly written. The only drawback is that the book is hard to put down. One wants to check out just one more thing and it goes on and on. I also like that it is a paperback or its 980 pages would be too heavy to lift. I heard the author interviewed on NPR and was prepared to pay a lot of money for the book and so was blown away by the Amazon price. It is a must have reference book.
The NPR Listener's Encyclopedia of Classical Music 2007-01-10
this was a gift and not read by me. My son, however, did like it very much.
A "Regular People" Review 2007-01-09
I went out on a limb and bought this while deployed overseas not really knowing what to expect. I didn't get what I wanted, but turns out, got something else....and its great. This I would say (along with THE ESSENTIAL CANNON OF CLASSICAL MUSIC by Dubal) make up the two books that I think every newcomer to classical music should own to enhance their listening experience. This book will function to explain every piece of strange terminology you will ancounter on your journey (and boy are their a lot of them!) and even give you background on some pieces and composers. So listen, enjoy....and keep me updated!
a magnum opus for the slightly intimidated 2006-12-06
Public radio, that soft target of pundits and ideologues, will be written up by cultural historians as one of the small candles of sanity that under the rhetorical swagger lent its soft glow to the quiet and the commuter.
How fitting, then, that this superbly accessible encyclopedia of classical music should bear the 'NPR' name (for 'National Public Radio') in its title. The 'Recommended Recordings' box that follows many of the entires will be hotly debated and even derided as falsely canonical. But pragmatic and novice listeners will welcome this feature as a point of departure from those awestruck moments of overwhelming beauty when one knows he must *have* that piece that just played, or perish.
My copy came unexpectedly from WCPE, the fine listener-supported station in North Carolina that I stream through my computer on five continents of business travel destinations, a little bit of almost-home that works its magic on the anonymity and sameness of hotel rooms. You may, less fortunate, have to buy your own.
Don't hesitate to do so if you find yourself often accompanied by the immortal - one hopes that turns out to be the right word - sounds of the West's still-living 'classical' music tradition. At least some of the angels, after all, must certainly sing Mozart. Listen to him there, read about him here, and you may one morning find yourself singing - every so slightly more knowledgeably - with them.
