World Famous Comics: 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
By: Norman Lebrecht Publisher: Anchor Average Rating: Binding: Paperback Label: Anchor Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 352 Publication Date: April 10, 2007 Release Date: April 10, 2007
Product Description: 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.
Entertainly Sassy History of Classical Recordings 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 Internet, ansd would have to be in catagories 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 free from the bottleneck that the traditional recording industry has been...
Opinionated but Fascinating I have just finished the book "The Life and Death of Classical Music", by Norman Lebrecht. It is a most fascinating read, my favorite of the year so far. As someone who has collected LP vinyl since the late 1950's, and CDs since they arrived on the market, I found Lebrecht's inside view of the record industry, producers, and moguls most enlightening. There also is much insight into the conductors, artists and performers, their temperaments and foibles, their successes and failures. Besides the wealth of inside information on the operation of the recording industry and its cast of characters, nearly half the book is devoted to an enthralling (if highly opinionated) listing of Lebrecht's picks of the "100 best and 20 worst recordings ever made". One may agree or disagree with any or all on the list, but you will not be indifferent to this enumeration of recordings spanning the years from 1902 (Caruso) to 2004 (Pascal Roge). Enlightenment, entertainment, even a little outrage to go with some hearty agreement--you cannot miss with this little paperback. (Anchor Books, $14.95)
the life and death of classical music I love this book and have bought many copies to give to friends. I was not so interested in Mr. Lebrechts opinions (I have my own) about which are the best and worst recordings, even though it is fun to read them, but was fascinated by the behind the scenes stories of how the classical recording world was shaped by a few visionary record executives and the intrigues and battles they fought to attract the greatest musicians and conductors to their labels, not unlike the story of how the great Hollywood studios came into being and identical to how the popular music labels thrived. The other main subjects that were so interesting to me were how the advent of recording changed performance and perfection in recording techniques changed the way we listen to music. The sad part of the story is where we are now.
An interesting but sloppy book Unlike a lot of musicians and music lovers, I generally quite like Norman Lebrecht, find him one of the more interesting and provocative writers about the music scene, and have read several of his books. The first part of the book is interesting for his account of the many behind-the-scenes goings-on that have gone into the making of so many recordings, the personalities and egos of the musicians making them and, perhaps more critically, the enormously small stakes involved. Even though I've often been amazed that commercial enterprises would spend so much money producing recordings that at best will appeal to five percent of the record-buying public, it's still astonishing to learn just how few copies some classical recordings, even by major artists, tend to sell.
My major criticism of this book (and indeed most of Lebrecht's books) is that it's sloppy. He could use a good editor and fact-checker to catch such obvious errors as saying that around 1970 the Boston Symphony was still a non-union orchestra that worked "cheap." He also criticizes companies for continuing to issue new performances of the same repertory (fair enough), but then also ridicules them when they make recordings of less familiar repertoire that fail to sell in order to satisfy egomaniac conductors. Also, he often strings together anecdotes with very little thematic context or chronological coherence, often jumping several decades in the space of a sentence or two; if you aren't at least vaguely aware of a lot of these events, you'll be entirely lost (then again, if you're not vaguely aware of them, you probably won't be reading this book).
As for his 100 best/20 worst list, his 100 best has a few whose significance I would question, and excludes some others I would add. I had a few disagreements with the "20 Worst" list, though: I LOVE Simon Rattle's "The Jazz Album" for the amazing clarinetist Michael Collins and the only performance that has ever made me like Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue). He also calls Gidon Kremer's Beethoven Violin Concerto recording (with the Schnittke cadenzas) a failure, not because it's a bad recording or was a bad idea, but because Philips apparently chickened out of promoting the novel cadenzas. I'm more in agreement with him about Bernstein's disastrous Enigma Variations. He probably should have added Bernstein's recording of West Side Story with Kiri Te Kanawa and Jose Carreras.
It's also important to point out, as others have, that the title is misleading: Lebrecht is talking mostly about the life and death of the classical record industry, rather than classical music itself (though he does make the usual points about declining audiences).
Definitely worth reading if you're into this sort of thing.
The crisis of classical music? In the last times several books and articles have cast doubts about the future of classical music. Evidences like the ageing of audiences attending concerts or the lack of renewal of repertoires support that thesis. In this context, the writer and critic Norman Lebrecht has published a new book on the subject. To support his thesis, the first part of the book is devoted to the history of the record industry, its rise and its fall, how were founded the companies that lead the sector for half a century; the impact of new technologies (stereophonic sound, digital recording) and formats (LP, CD) in its evolution; and, finally, the present situation where big companies face a shrinking production and a fierce competition from small independent publishers besides the internet and downloads. Any selection is obviously subjective and the criteria applied can be questioned. Nevertheless it is worth to know the circumstances and fact that were around the making of these records, some of them unanimously considered as absolute references. What is left after reading the book is a certain air of pessimism. However its reading is worthwhile as it offers a vivid description of the recording industry, well documented with bibliographic references, and what is more important, with the author's personal experiences.
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