In this compulsively readable, fascinating, and provocative guide to classical music, Norman Lebrecht, one of the world’s most widely read cultural commentators tells the story of the rise of the classical recording industry from Caruso’s first notes to the heyday of Bernstein, Glenn Gould, Callas, and von Karajan. Lebrecht compellingly demonstrates that classical recording has reached its end point–but this is not simply an expos? of decline and fall. It is, for the first time, the full story of a minor art form, analyzing the cultural revolution wrought by Schnabel, Toscanini, Callas, Rattle, the Three Tenors, and Charlotte Church. It is the story of how stars were made and broken by the record business; how a war criminal conspired with a concentration-camp victim to create a record empire; and how advancing technology, boardroom wars, public credulity and unscrupulous exploitation shaped the musical backdrop to our modern lives. The book ends with a suitable shrine to classical recording: the author’s critical selection of the 100 most important recordings–and the 20 most appalling. Filled with memorable incidents and unforgettable personalities–from Goddard Lieberson, legendary head of CBS Masterworks who signed his letters as God; to Georg Solti, who turned the Chicago Symphony into “ the loudest symphony on earth”–this is at once the captivating story of the life and death of classical recording and an opinioned, insider’s guide to appreciating the genre, now and for years to come.
For the vast majority of its fans around the world, the experience of listening to classical music has been through recording.
In the closing years of the twentieth century, classical music and opera have undergone radical transformation, and a structure that stretched back to Bach and Handel has been destroyed.In recent...
A companion to the Classic FM series Francesca Caccini.
How does music reflect the key moments in our lives? How do we choose the works that inspire, delight, comfort or console?
Ralph Locke and Cyrilla Barr ( eds . ) , Cultivating Music in America : Women Patrons and Activists since 1860 ( Berkeley , University of California Press , 1997 ) . Cyrilla Barr , Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge : American Patron of Music ...
Unruly, offensive, and hopeless in so much of his life, yet driven to a fault and devoted to his art, conquering deafness to pen masterpieces. Norman Lebrecht, has been grappling with this icon at the heart of music for his entire life.
The death of classical music, the distinguished critic and musicologist Joseph Kerman declares, is “a tired, vacuous concept that will not die.” In this wide-ranging collection of essays and reviews, Kerman examines the ongoing vitality ...
Standing near the stage at the Brixton Academy, my dad asked me how it can possibly be that Shane MacGowan was still alive. Well, that's the question, isn't it, Pops? How has he managed to cling on for this long?
In 2008, the renowned violinist Paul Robertson suffered a ruptured aorta.
The Death of David Debrizzi