Decca's 50 Classical Music Favorites is a triple-disc compilation of short pieces, movements from longer works, and excerpts that represent the best the genre offers, and most of the melodies are instantly recognizable to the most casual listener. To the extent that it presents extremely familiar music, this set really seems designed to be an introduction to the artists, whose performances have been chosen to show off their strengths. Whether it's
Claudio Arrau delivering one of the most delicate performances of
Chopin's Nocturne No. 2,
I Musici offering Pachelbel's Canon in a refreshing up-tempo rendition, or
Pierre Monteux leading the
London Symphony Orchestra in a gorgeous performance of the Waltz from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, there are many tracks that expose the listener to the great musicians who made distinctive recordings for Decca and Deutsche Grammophon in the mid- to late 20th century. However, the most serious drawback to this collection is that the excerpts aren't properly labeled as such, so the brief snippets from Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto, Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, Rossini's William Tell Overture, Dukas' The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Ponchielli's "Dance of the Hours," Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1, Dvorák's "From the New World" Symphony, Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2, Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, and Smetana's The Moldau give the beginner a false impression of these works' actual length and the sample's context. Beyond that (and the continued misattribution to Haydn of the spurious Serenade, which is actually by Hoffstetter), it is a fairly generous sampler of the labels' high quality recordings, and it's certainly worth exploring for gift ideas.