The Life and Death of Classical Music: Featuring the 100 Best and 20 Worst Recordings Ever Made
by Norman Lebrecht
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Book Summary Information
Author: Norman LebrechtEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2007-04-10
ISBN: 1400096588
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: Anchor
Book Reviews of The Life and Death of Classical Music: Featuring the 100 Best and 20 Worst Recordings Ever Made
Book Review: Entertainly Sassy History of Classical Recordings
Summary: 5 Stars
The title should more precisely read, "An Entertainingly Sassy History of Classical Recordings, from the Gramophone to the Decline of the CD".
I viewed the book as a superbly sassy history from an exquisitely eloquent critic with a long, insider career. It is a book as much about the history of the recording industry itself, right down to naming names, as it is a list of recordings. The book is in fact divided into the two parts- a history of the industry and the best/worst recordings.
The book whetted my taste for more sassy histories, perhaps spoiling me, other authors being revealed as dry, droning, and encyclopedic in delivery...
I gave the author leeway in his selections, as he had to pluck down 100 of something, and as a career insider I'm sure he selected works among the most deserving (though I confess I began at the back of the book with his spicier accounts of the "20 worst classical recordings ever")...
If a continuation compilation was made, it would begin with the age of the Internet, and would have to be categorized along the lines of record label offerings, Youtube presentations, music hosting sites for independent artists, and the like; the author would have to make a huge effort in finding, sifting through, and evaluating the mushrooming number of artists and recordings made available by a communications technology that is, so far, free from the artistic bottlenecks and choke holds that were inherent in the recording industry throughout the last century (and will still be a necessary evil to obtain mass exposure/promotion/marketing, though transformed into Internet form)...
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Summary of The Life and Death of Classical Music: Featuring the 100 Best and 20 Worst Recordings Ever Made
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.
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