Collect The Maestro Myth: Great Conductors In Pursuit Of Power Prepared By Norman Lebrecht Depicted In Physical Book

very fast, in great condition, this is a wonderful and very interesting book by Normal Lebrecht, Great value for money! Lebrecht is opinionated, often biased, scatological when he can

be, but indispensable in digging up detail about music and musicians that is available nowhere else.
Interestingly, I was exploring newspaper coverage and program notes for the Boston Symphony and New York Philhamonic around the turn of theth Century and was fascinated to see far detail and quite candid revelations there than in the smooth and laundered notes provided audiences in recent decades.
So in a sense, Lebrecht is reverting to an earlier, authentic mode of information exchange less civil to be sure, Norman is so out theresometimes one sentence hasborderline vocabthat I should look up, Just finished DEATH of Classical Music by him, Kind regards. Excellent Fast delivery. Perfect condition. Highly recommended! Have you ever, as I have, stood while a classical piece is playing, and waved your arms like you're conducting You're not.
Conductors set tempi. On every recorded piece of classical music ever produced the tempo has already been set, By a real conductor. Have you ever, as I've done, passed up a piece of music you want to add to collection by an unknown conductor, holding out, as I've done, for a name brand Dangerous, but I've been burned by cheap albums.
Are Conductors necessary Sure. Orchestras have to start and stop together and in between they need someone to keep time, That's what a conductor does, But what else are they good forThis book tries deconstructing famous conductors, The author starts out showing the foibles inherent in composers conducting their own works except in the rare cases of a Mahler.
Unfortunately, instead of taking an objective pretense, he's too energetic in his own prejudices while discrediting conductors because of theirs, In particular, he has it in for Herbert von Karajan and Leonard Bernstein, Both men dominated the post war classical music scene, He repeatedly compares Karajan to Hitler often unfairly, saying both men "had remarkable powers of concentration, " I hope a remarkable power of concentration, which I lack, btw, is not, in his book, the hallmark of James Bond level evil genius.
After all, if a conductor is going to conduct a full symphony or opera, he'd better have remarkable powers of concentration, Karajan did join the National Socialist party but is that worse than being a Stalinist at the time when Stalin forced Shostakovich to withdraw his Fourth Symphony as being "not Socialist enough" Or when he let Prokofiev perform abroad but made sure he kept the composer/performer's children back in the USSR Yet the author has a soft spot for Communists, who were just as bad as National Socialists, if not so focused in their long line of mass slaughter and artistic censorship.
The book is most interesting not when the author is airing his prejudices or attempting to destroy a conductor's legacy of music, but when he gets to "inside baseball" gossip about, say, the rivalry between Claudio Abbado and Ricardo Muti.
Or enlightening us on why conductors from all parts of Italy despise each other, Why do I cherry pick the conductors I name Because Karajan, Bernstein, Abbado and Muti along with others like Szell and Ormandy and Dorati dominate my own record collections.
He also delights in trashing a favorite conductor of mine named Giuseppe Sinopoli, though he does it through the words of others.
Sinopoli's interpretations may occasionally be eccentric, I prefer his Bruckner Three over all other comers I've heard, including Solti's, If you have a favorite handful of conductors you'll hate the way he talks about them except Abbado, whom he loves, but so do I but you'll laugh when he trashes conductors you don't like.
Laugh while you can. This book reminds me of the excellent but opinionated studies of Broadway and Hollywood of Ethan Mordden, except Mordden has a supert with and is very funny and this guy doesn't have the sense of humor he thinks he has.
There's nothing funny in what he probably thinks is a witty discussion of Beethoven's decline, He particularly has it in for Simon Legree type conductors, But remember, conductors not only have to keep a tempo, they have to keep in check the egos and onion skin feelings of as many asmusicians.
Not to mention singers, if necessary, To keep an orchestra puttering along as a unit, a conductor has to crack a whip occasionally, I'm surprised to learn every conductor isn't a martinet, I don't know why we prefer some conductors to others, I know why I like Szell for some things, One Brahms piece always puzzled me, Then I heard it on the radio conducted by Szell and suddenly it all made sense, That very day I bought a box of Szell Brahms recordings, Otherwise, why do orchestras under certain conductors speak to us than others Ah, that, I fear, is the subjectivity of art, It doesn't matter to me if Karajan was a card carrying member of his Party, or if Abbado leans toward Communism despite what he can command, or if Bernstein was a nut who thought he understand Mahler better than Mahler did.
I love their music. In most cases, as with Szell and Brahms, I knew the music before I knew the people, I heard Anne Sophie Mutter on the radio before they announced her name, before I saw she was gorgeous or learned she was one of Karajan's discoveries.
I said to myself, "Whoever that is, is my new favorite violinist, " The same thing happened with a piece I heard by Rudolph Serkin, The music, at rock bottom, is really all that matters, I love Sinopoli's music or, rather, the music he squeezes out of his orchestras and no critics are going to talk me out of it.
All that matters to me is: is the music goodDo I miss the days when certain conductors stayed with orchestras foryears and developed a personal sound, rather than being jet setting sex symbols Yes.
Do I think conductors are overpaid Yes, but so are top tier movie and rock musicians, Were Pavarotti or Domingo overpaid Sure, Are baseball and football players Undoubtedly, But unlike overpaid politicians and their ilk, unless orchestras are funded municipally, their pay doesn't come out of my pocket, Otherwise, what business is it of mine what anyone in ANY profession can leverage on a free market I wish I could leverage the big bucks, but I also wish I were musical enough to conduct.
I can't, because I can't maintain a tempo, I was in my high school band and later in as band and I stunk at playing, and couldn't keep time well.
In the high school band I kept one eye on the music and the other on the baton, But the conductors I think are overpaid are the ones I don't like, While movie are overpaid whether I like them or not, In fact, in some places, this book is downright dangerous, Though the author does it backhandedly, unwittingly or not he perpetuates the myth that Stokowski's real name may have been Stokes, It wasn't. He doesn't state it but he also doesn't go out of his way to correct it, That's sloppy research. If I can get the real skinny on Stokowski's birth certificate his name wasn't originally Stokowski but neither was it Stokes with as little clout as I have so could he.
The one place I agree with him whole heartedly was in his discussion of the then current rage for "original instruments, " He's against the fad and so am I, Instruments, and orchestras, evolve and improve for a reason, I think the book has an interesting premise but it would have come across better had the author not telegraphed his own prejudices on every page.
It makes his hatchet job look like a personal vendetta rather than a finely reasoned monograph, Music may be altogether subjective, but a purported work of serious scholarship as to at least pretend to be objective, Examining the nature of the orchestra conductor, The Maestro Myth is a vigorous analysis of musical ambition and achievement, Acclaimed by critics, this refreshingly iconoclastic history of a profession which has all too often been the object of sycophantic reverence, is also a chronicle of individual endeavor and ambition.
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