Sunday, October 17, 2010

Not a Player hater

So I bitched a while back about Gramophone dropping its cover CD in favour of the web-based Gramophone Player, but having used the Player for a couple of weeks now I have to say it's rather good. It's not too cluttered, the sound quality is good, and the musical excerpts are nice and long. And the presence of video extracts is handy, too. It was a sensible move, timing the player's launch to go with the Awards issue - video of the winners' speeches are there, plus of course excerpts from all the winning discs, so there's plenty to attract the curious.
In terms of what it actually does, then, the Player's an improvement over the cover disc and can be welcomed as a good thing. But my concern over how it will fit my listening habits still stands. With a cover disc, I could come home, slump on the sofa, and listen to the disc while leafing through the magazine. Conversely, though, I'm more likely to listen to the music while doing things such as writing this blog entry. So I think the net result may be that, although the Player does a better job than a CD of supporting the magazine's content, the change in my listening will mean the music nevertheless becomes less an integral part of the magazine.

Incidentally, having noted that last year's Gramophone Awards gave not even a nomination to the 2009 Nereffid's Guide Awards recording of the year, I should point out that Lenny's Mass picked up the Editor's Choice award this year.

1 comment:

JFLL said...

Hello Nereffid, nice to read your comments on this (and indeed on anything else). One feature I like particularly about the Player which wasn't on the disc) is the inclusion of complete re-mastered works 'from the archive', with artists which I must admit were completely new to me, for example Rene Soames in Dowland and Campian, Frtiz Lehmann in Bach Cantata 39 and Ginette Doyen in Chabrier/Saint-Saens piano music.