Have you ever been frustrated, disgusted and discouraged by the overabundance of lousy classical music productions and selections you run across these days?  Sometimes it's hard to purchase quality CDs and DVDs with the number of junk recordings flooding the market and you may, as a serious collector of classical recordings, need a quality reference as a guide before emptying your wallet on recordings that may as well be featured on a rack in the local dollar store.  THE PENGUIN GUIDE TO COMPACT DISCS & DVDs: Yearbook 2006/7 Best Buys in Classical Music (the companion to the main  Penguin Guide) will provide you with everything you need to begin or expand the superlative collection you've always wanted.  

Choices of key recordings, sometimes with several selections, are offered to the collector.  The reader can peruse offerings in instrumental recitals, vocal and choral collections and concerts of orchestral and concertante music. In addition there is an  A to Z compendium of brief biographical sketches of composers and their works and another entailing EMI's great artists and conductors.  Literally hundreds of new and reissued CDs are reviewed.  The reviews, almost scholarly and certainly knowledgeable, will assist the reader in making the perfect selection according to his needs or desires.  The collector need not settle for space fillers in a collection when the learned ears and minds can help him find the best that money can buy (often at bargain basement prices ).  

I was certainly taken by the breadth and scope that the entries in this book entail.  I especially enjoyed some of the candid ones nestled in the pages of this book.  "With the chorus less well focused than it should be, the glory of the set lies in the solo singing from an exceptionally starry quartet ...."  If you think you are a class classical act and want a classical music collection to match, you need a top quality guide and this is THE one you need to purchase.