Conversations with Menuhin

by David Dubal and Annabeth Albert

Book Overview

A concert pianist interviews his mentor and reveals the revered musician's opinions on other great composers and performers, from Vivaldi to Michael Jackson, examines his ideas about music and life,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0151225869
• ISBN13: 9780151225866
• Release Date: January 1992
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 4.9" x 7.5"

Customer Reviews

the rich and LOST art of conversation illuminated...

Conversations with Menuhin is a bountiful book, fully engaged, intelligent, and important. It contains a lengthy conversation between two men - Yehudi Menuhin, by every standard one of the 20th century's greatest artists and thinkers, and David Dubal, a provocative writer and musician. I repeat: this book presents a CONVERSATION. It is not a smacking little knock off of injudicious tidbits, and not a glitzy, pre-packaged, hit-the-gossip points tv interview. Granted there are few enough Americans who any longer have even a vague notion of what conversation consists, but one finds in these pages what one may have lost. The vitriol often concocted against Dubal is simply fantastical, and displays an unfettered prejudice never explaining itself. Dubal is completely engaged as a full partner in a conversation with Menuhin, nothing less. The conversation takes place during the course of a number of sittings, and fully states so. Yes, one of course reads the book to absorb the thought of Menuhin, yet Dubal-- to his credit--respects Yehudi Menuhin sufficiently to engage himself fully as a worthy partner, enabling a wonderful conversation between two thinking people to ensue. And it's a beautiful conversation we're lucky to have. Both men are by turns humorous, unafraid, and knowing. Certainly the insights with which the book abounds lay waste to the regrettable idea that musicians should talk about Beethoven and play their instruments and leave engaged thoughtfulness to others. For those with such views, A Current Affair and Entertainment Tonight should remain your intellectual source, and more power to you. Don't be misled. I will turn to this book again and again to this thoughtful book over the years, finding in its richness and concision a poignant and vital antidote to a culture saturated to the point of delirium with the gross flimsiness of the worship of so-called entertainment values. Buy it, read it, be encouraged and renewed.