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

by Norman Lebrecht

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1400096588
• ISBN13: 9781400096589
• Release Date: April 2007
• Publisher: Anchor Books
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 0.76 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

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.

Always entertaining and informative

Lebrecht has been placing lilies on the grave of classical music for some time now. A more accurate title would be "The Life and Death of Classical Recording," as classical music itself is alive and well. It is an observable fact that the traditional CD is probably on its way out as a "pop" music vehicle; it would be unrealistic to expect classical recording to be unaffected by the ongoing shift to MP3 and other computer formats. Like the "Death" card of the Tarot deck, signifying not death so much as change, the industry is not dying but evolving in unexpected directions. What must be upsetting for those involved is the unpredictability of change - who, in 1975, would have predicted the prevalence of hip-hop today? The same forces are reflected in classical music, on a smaller scale. The relative popularity of classical music in the 20th century's midpoint was an anomaly. Through the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic eras, composers were dependent on patronage (Schubert may have been the first serious composer to support himself, primarily through the popularity of his songs for the Biedermeier set, rather than his "serious" music). The typical 19th century European peasant, like his modern American counterpart, may have gone his entire life without hearing a Beethoven piano sonata. The majority, then as now, had their "popular" music. Lebrecht manages to unearth endless troves of fascinating minutiae. For instance, he relates how Phillips, the inventors of the cassette, partnered with Sony to develop the compact disc. The Dutch wanted the new format to be the same size as the cassette, however, the favorite piece of the Sony chairman's wife was Beethoven's 9th Symphony, too long to fit onto a disk of that size. To accommodate it, the disk's diameter was increased to allow 80 minutes of music, with the center hole corresponding to the size of the smallest Dutch coin. The lists of the "100 best" and "20 worst" recordings don't exactly complement each other. The "100" are sometimes, but not always, the "best;" Lebrecht chose many recordings primarily for their significance, be it artistic, historical, or political. The "20" were not chosen for their lack of significance; in most cases, they represent bad ideas or poor execution by people who should have known better.

Deserves to be placed aside next to the Penguin Guide....

A fascinating and absorbing read, Lebrecht's expose into the demise of classical music is as revealing as it is heartbreaking. Ten years ago, I was fortunate enough to work at one of the top classical radio stations in the US--(KDFC Classical 102.1 FM in San Francisco)there, I acquired a passion for classical music, reading Grammaphone and the Penguin Guide to Classial Compact Disc's with a fervor as children do with comic books. In short, it was an education in many ways--music as an art form, the aquisition of a refined taste, and a practical education into a highly unpredicatable business. Lebrecht's book sheds light on all the vanities, egos, and personalities in the industry--past and present. Here is Karajan--masestro grandioso--feared but respected, whose net worth at his death was estimated at over $500 million with most of it derived from reissues of his earlier and better performances. Here is Bernstein, who, considered a somewhat of a second-tier conductor, plagued with insecurities and pretentious self-doubt, would often exasperate orchestras without punctuality or form (often forcing entire orchestras to wait an hour or more before he took to the podium) with his disdain for the inviolate nature of some works that are an inherent part of a country's national identity. Although venerated as a national treasure, Lebrecht paints another dimension to Bernstein; he recalls how the conductor completely botched a recording session with BBC Orchestra to produce one of the "worst classical recordings of all time"--Elgar's Enigma Variations in 1982. A very sloppy and unprofessional approach to a job overall and a personal insult to the dead composer's memory and the English. What is interesting about this book is how Lebrecht puts it all together; the rivalries between the major labels: Decca, DG, Phillips, EMI and their producers scrambling to be the first to sign an exclusive contract with the industry's power players--Bernstein, Solti, Rattle, among others; how "crossover" discs and performances(a Bono and Pavarotti duo easily comes to mind)ultimately spelled doom for serious classical music fan; how the major labels used sexy CD cover art of young and talented artists like Vanessa Mae, Anne Sophie Mutter and Charlotte Church to increase sales of an already declining market, and the unexpected rise of Klaus Heymann and NAXOS. Here is the budget CD tycoon who taught all the "majors" a valuable lesson by hiring lesser known and Eastern European orchestras looking for work and produced several Grammaphone award-winning discs with Vivaldi's Four Seasons taking away honors as one of the best-selling classical recordings ever produced topping sales of 1.16 million besting even the venerated Arthur Fiedler of the Boston Pops! If you ever wanted to know the in and outs of a business as fascinating as the classical music industry, this is a must read.

Lebrecht tells it as it is

Norman Lebrecht belongs to a rare group of people who not only know more about classical music than most music encyclopedias but also are extremely gifted with writing. All his books are fascinating and even if the reader doesn't always want to agree with his often pessimistic views of this art form's future, one cannot brush aside the facts he so powerfully presents. "Life and Death of Classical Music" is two books in one: exactly a half of it is dedicated to the history of the recording business, the other listing one hundred recordings that were in Mr. Lebrecht's opinion milestones in the recorded history, plus another twenty that should never have been made. The first part tells generally previously unheard behind-the-scenes stories of all the leading recording companies, their bigwigs both in management and their cash cows, the conductors and other artists, since the very beginning of the industry. The author manages to weave all this together in an irresistibly interesting story that reads like the best suspense novel. As the title indicates, the story doesn't end with a 'they lived happily ever after' but paints a rather dark picture of the collapse of the industry, well documented by nose-diving global sales figures, and the reader at this point is not surprised by the reasons. It is hard to put the book down during the first 150 pages as the writing is so captivating. I read the 'worst' list before starting with the 'best', as I found it more tempting. Many music lovers have traditionally bought recordings, both LPs and CDs, based on the familiarity and reputation of the artists on the cover. The reader is in for a shock as the 'mistakes' chapter has many of the same stars featured, but as every recording, both good and bad, is discussed in a form of a short essay, the reasons for Mr. Lebrecht's choices become evident. The 'masterpiece' list in a chronological order. Some of the early recordings may not be familiar to many of today's listeners, although they ought to be. Editing wasn't possible in the early days, and it is a well documented fact that some of the greatest names might have 20-30 takes of the same 4+ minutes that would fit on a side of a 78 rpm disc, until they were pleased with the results. With magnetic tape splicing gave a never-before-seen opportunity to fix mistakes and with today's technology even individual 16th notes can be corrected and a faulty pitch raised or lowered. This means is that a recording can sound equally good whether it is done by musicians in Moscow, Russia or Moscow, Idaho. The late Finnish music critic (of the Helsingin Sanomat) and journalist Seppo Heikinheimo called Norman Lebrecht "the world's best expert of conductors" in his posthumously published memoirs and I would like to agree with this. This new book (published under the title "Maestros, Masterpieces, and Madness" in the U.K.) gives readers an amazing amount of insight into the business of conducting, the enormous egos of the maestros

WHAT A GREAT BOOK!

I LOVED this book! Norman Lebrecht is a terrific writer. He is erudite, accessible, and lively. Perhaps best of all, his enthusiasm is contagious. This book caused me to take action, which only a handful of the thousands of books I've read in my life have caused me to do. His passionate descriptions of the best recordings inspired me to purchase several of them -- and they're just as good as he says they are! (In particular, Jacqueline du Pre's recording of the Elgar Cello Concerto is one of the most remarkable recordings I've ever heard -- and I would never have known about it without this book.) Having said that, I agree with another reviewer who notes that Lebrecht doesn't seem to have much of a feel for popular music, and this seems to result in some overly harsh judgements in certain instances.