A companion CD to his inspirational autobiography of the same title, Christopher Parkening's Grace Like a River is a 12-track survey that skims over his career from 1963 to 2006. Any disc of excerpts covering four decades of recordings is bound to leave an incomplete impression of an artist, but one assumes the book fills in the gaps left by this routine compilation. Overall, Parkening's playing is technically polished and elegant, though often bland in expression, and frequently marred by his labored humming; as usual, it is a mixed bag of good and bad things with this guitarist, and his fans will already know what to expect and excuse. But this compilation of greatest hits, drawn from seven of Parkening's most popular albums, is plainly aimed at buyers of the book, presumed to be the newest of newcomers who don't already have Bach's Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring, the Chaconne in D minor, or the Adagio from Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez on a guitar album. The rest of the program consists of less familiar pieces, so there are some intriguing discoveries for novices among the solo pieces by Albéniz, Tárrega, Villa-Lobos, Ravel, and Ponce. But guitar aficionados are unlikely to find this sampler especially interesting, and Parkening's admirers probably have all the recordings anyway, except for the exclusive release of Parkening's live performance of the "Ritmico e cavalleresco" from Castelnuovo-Tedesco's Guitar Concerto No. 1. As might be imagined in such a broad collection, EMI's sound ranges from the merely adequate on the live track to sumptuous in the selection from Elmer Bernstein's Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra.