Recommends the best recordings of the three hundred most important classical works, and provides background information on each composer One of America's most highly regarded music critics and commentators, Ted Libbey is host of the "Basic Record Library," the most popular segment on National Public Radio's "Performance Today." Ted has served as a top editor and music critic at High Fidelity magazine, Musical America, New York Times, and The Washington Star, and acted as programming consultant and coordinator for the John F. Kennedy Center's "Tribute to Germany" in 1992. He is author of "Symphonic Portraits: A Classical Portfolio," the "Performance Today Basic Record Library Booklet," and of histories of the National Symphony Orchestra and Carnegie Hall, as well as a forthcoming study of violinist Isaac Stern. Ted was a co-producer of the 1996 NPR Classics release "J.S. Bach In Performance," and served as repertory consultant and co-producer of Time-Life Records' Beethoven Series and Great Composer Series, which went platinum in 1991. Ted graduated cum laude from Yale University as a Yale National Scholar, and during graduate school was appointed assistant conductor of the Stanford University orchestra. He spent a year as director of the Composer/Librettist Program at the National Endowment for the Arts, and in 1988 received the United States Information Agency's Award for Outstanding Service as a consultant for USIA's Artistic Ambassador Program. Ted also composed the score for the award-winning film "Home of Hope," and several of his arrangements have been performed at Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center. He frequently lectures in the United States and Europe, and often appears at informative talks across the country. (From the Introduction by Mstislav Rostropovich) We are fortunate today that we can explore music in so many ways, through concerts, broadcasts, and recordings. Yet the abundance of choices available can be quite confusing. That is why we readers are lucky that Ted Libbey has provided this guide to the complex and magnificent realm of music. I have known Ted for many years, and I can promise you that he will be your best possible friend in the discoveries that lie ahead. Ted is one of the world's greatest musicologists. He has enormous academic knowledge, which he acquired at Yale and as a doctoral students at Stanford, and he is certainly familiar with the world of recordings. But for me the most important thing is the way Ted engages with the music. He comes to each performance with "open ears," ready to hear whatever the music will teach him, and his writing reflects this. The suggestions he makes in this book-the way he talks about the pieces themselves and his choice of recordings-all convey this essential understanding.