BBC Music

I have subscribed to BBC Music magazine for several years, from just after it started. I look upon it as a cd with a free magazine attached. Over the years, the cds have built up to form a mainstay of what has become quite a large collection. I still regularly play most of the cds - even the ones from over five years ago - and several of them are amongst the best recordings and/or performances in my collection. The great advantage of the magazine is that you can subscribe from anywhere in the world, the deliveries are always on time and the product is never faulty. (I have lived outside UK for ten years.) In most places where I have lived, there are very few ...  Read the complete review

I picked up this magazine for the first time when I saw that the March issue had a decent free CD with it. I say 'free' CD, but as with most of these magazines, it's not cheap, at £3.99, so you pay for the CD freebies in the end anyway. Having said that, it's good value, even if you're only interested in the CD, and the magazine itself is a good read, packed with information and reviews. "The essential guide to classical music" is what it claims on the front cover, and I'd say it's a pretty authoritative magazine - a quality publication, the classical equivalent to Q or Mojo. As it's from the Beeb, I ...  Read the complete review

BBC Music is probably the most comprehensive mag of its type (though I admit I haven't ever read Classic FM which is similar, I think). The main attraction is the CD which comes with each issue and the policy here is to present complete works, not excerpts, and since its launch in September 1992, this means that the collection has grown to over 100 CD's, a handsome collection on its own. I won't pretend I like everything they include on these CD's but I have equally found myself listening to a great deal of music that might otherwise have passed me by. They generally tread just to one side of the popular repertoire but this doesn't mean they ...  Read the complete review