The Life and Death of Classical Music: Featuring the 100 Best and 20 Worst Recordings Ever Made

The Life and Death of Classical Music: Featuring the 100 Best and 20 Worst Recordings Ever Made - Paperback

$19.00
$19.00
Skip to product information
The Life and Death of Classical Music: Featuring the 100 Best and 20 Worst Recordings Ever Made
  • The Life and Death of Classical Music: Featuring the 100 Best and 20 Worst Recordings Ever Made
The Life and Death of Classical Music: Featuring the 100 Best and 20 Worst Recordings Ever Made - Paperback

The Life and Death of Classical Music: Featuring the 100 Best and 20 Worst Recordings Ever Made - Paperback

by Norman Lebrecht
$19.00
$19.00

Book Overview

by Norman Lebrecht (Author)

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.

Author Biography

Norman Lebrecht, assistant editor of the Evening Standard in London and presenter of BBC's lebrecht.live, is a prolific writer on music and cultural affairs, whose weekly column has been called "required reading." Lebrecht has written eleven books about music, and is also author of the novel The Song of Names, which won the Whitbread First Novel Award in 2003.

Number of Pages: 352
Dimensions: 0.8 x 8 x 5.2 IN
Publication Date: April 10, 2007
ISBN9781400096589
Author Norman Lebrecht
PublisherAnchor Books
GenreYoung adult
FormatPaperback
PublishedApril 2007
LanguageENG- English
Pages352
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

Related Subjects

Young Adult Nonfiction Young Adults

1% fer Each of the Seven Seas

Every purchase sends 7% of our profits to The Ocean Cleanup. No fine print, no opt-in — just how we sail.

Whoever Ye Be, Welcome Aboard

Queer lit, music, art, philosophy, fiction — stories for every kind of soul. Come as ye are, matey.

More by Norman Lebrecht

Genius & Anxiety: How Jews Changed the World, 1847-1947

Genius & Anxiety: How Jews Changed the World, 1847-1947 - Paperback

Genius & Anxiety: How Jews Changed the World, 1847-1947 - Paperback

By Norman Lebrecht

About Norman Lebrecht

Norman Lebrecht is the author of The Maestro Myth, The Book of Musical Anecdotes, and a number of other books on music, and is the editor of Mahler Remembered. He has made several documentaries and has covered the music world for London's Sunday Times, the Los Angeles Times, and other publications. He lives in London.

You may also like