If you're interested in building or maintaining a classical music recording library, want advice on what to buy, and like the format of your recommendations to be on the breezy side, this may be your book. Jim Svejda's picks are sound ones, although he tends to favor older recordings over newer ones and leaves out some outstanding efforts in the process. Still, he gives you the straight scoop as he hears it, and he hears it pretty well.

"The best, most searching and fascinating reiew of music around." Dudley Moore

Jim Svejda has done it again! In this fully revised and expanded edition of The Record Shelf Guide to Classical CDs and Audiocassettes, the irreverent and opinionated author guides readers to more of the best in classical music.

Host of the long-running American Public Radio show The Record Shelf, Svejda has assembled this comprehensive guide alphabetically by composer. Meant to be used as a reference manual, Svejdaa concentrates mainly on what he feels is the classical music people actually listen to most.In his opinion, this consists of music produced from the middle of the eighteenth century to roughly the middle of the twentieth.

This book is filled with Svejda's own brand of unusual, acerbic comments and sugary prose. It includes feisty reviews such as ". . . Pachelbel was a third-rate baroque non-entity who occasional rose to the level of second-rate in some of his organ music." And praise of favorites such as Fritz Kreisler, ". . . one of the greatest violins in history whose recordings of Beethoven, Brahms, and Mendelssohn concertos remain unsurpassed in their Romantic daring and philosophical depth . . ."

About the Author:

Jim Svejda hosts the popular weekly American Public Radio show The Record Shelf, as well as the CBS Radio program On Film. In addition to his radio programs, he is the station manager for KUSC in Los Angeles.