Books on Classical Music : Recommending / Considering

[SimonNZ]

Not just a good "music (auto)biography" but a good book, period. Hough can write, and has a distinctive style and voice. This only covers the early part of his life--through music school, so it's sort of a coming of age story.

I got given a copy of his Rough Ideas a couple of days ago. Not sure when I'll get to it. Have you read that one?

[Brian]

@Mookalafalas curious about two of the conductor memoirs you have read recently and how they handle more "dramatic"/sordid sides of things. Does Schwarz discuss his ejection from Seattle and the bitterness there? And does Brusilow discuss the unceremonious end of the Dallas Symphony on his watch? My understanding is that the orchestra brought him over from Philly as a bright young future star, but the orchestra went into the ground, donations dried up, and half a season was cancelled for lack of cash. The DSO then went into "dark ages" until being rescued by some super rich locals and Eduardo Mata. I'm curious if this is yet another incident where Brusilow says he is the good guy done wrong...

[Mookalafalas]

@Mookalafalas curious about two of the conductor memoirs you have read recently and how they handle more "dramatic"/sordid sides of things. Does Schwarz discuss his ejection from Seattle and the bitterness there? And does Brusilow discuss the unceremonious end of the Dallas Symphony on his watch? My understanding is that the orchestra brought him over from Philly as a bright young future star, but the orchestra went into the ground, donations dried up, and half a season was cancelled for lack of cash. The DSO then went into "dark ages" until being rescued by some super rich locals and Eduardo Mata. I'm curious if this is yet another incident where Brusilow says he is the good guy done wrong...

  Sorry, Brian, I just saw this. It's been a while since I read them...I don't think Schwarz mentioned any unpleasantness in Seattle. The second half of the book is how he built it up from rubble, and got a huge beautiful hall built. He did say his NEW MUSIC choices were sometimes unpopular. I vaguely remember wondering why he was moving on--if it was age or what.  And Brusilow never acknowledged any personal failings, whatsoever. I recall his "creatively" getting popular music recording contracts, to give the orchestra extra money. And he talked a lot about how Ormandy vengefully threatened to have any soloist who played with Dallas blackballed from the classical world, and scared them all away--except for Van Cliburn, who continued to play for him. I think he also talked about a music critic who had it in for him, although that comes up in a lot of the bios, and I could be mixing them up.
 

[Cato]

Has anyone seen this recent book as a physical copy? Published by Cambridge in the last few years and expensive - listed on Amazon as over 500 pages - MY INTEREST are the illustrations which I cannot determine from Amazon or the Cambridge website - in my mind a book of this type would require a LOT of great pics - can anyone help me decide on a purchase (now $36 paperback on Amazon but if I had $20 credit then a BUY!).  Thanks - Dave

I found this for you: it seems to have at least c. 100 photographs taken by the author "unless otherwise noted" according to the List of Figures:

https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_History_of_Stringed_Keyboard_Instrumen/60pgEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover

[vers la flamme]

Got myself a copy of this today:



So far, it's very good–detailed, but also quite to the point. I'm not sure how many Beethoven bios I really need, but I would love to read Jan Swafford's as well.

Still need to get my hands on good bios of Bach, Mozart, and Schubert... if anyone knows of any, I'm open to recommendations.