Books

Anyone hoping this insightful memoir might add substance to rumours of acrimony surrounding conductor Gerard Schwarz’s departure from the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic in 2006 (following five years as music director) will be sorely disappointed. Indeed, he has nothing but praise for the musicians in his charge and the ‘many lasting friendships’ he made and ‘fantastic concerts’ he gave during his time there.

Following 2014’s publication of a collection of his eminently urbane correspondence, anyone impelled to know more about the trailblazing American harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick will welcome its sequel – again edited with exemplary thoroughness by his niece Meredith Kirkpatrick. Divided into four sections spanning essays, reflections and lectures, it’s kick-started by an agreeably gossipy memoir opening in pre-war Salzburg where Poulenc, Eugene Ormandy and the poet Stephen Spender were among those dropping by his studio.

Here’s the story of a real-life Gone Girl. When opportunistic thieves stole Min Kym’s £1.2 million Stradivarius in Euston Station in 2010, it wasn’t only the instrument’s insurers who gulped. The 31-year-old Korean violinist was devastated and fell into depression, unable to get up and unable to play: ‘It’s Gone! It’s Gone! But more than that… I’ve Gone too’. Slowly, she is now finding her voice again and coming to terms with a complex pyschological past.

Harvey Sachs’s third publication devoted to Arturo Toscanini, a monumental new biography, follows his earlier one (1978) and his edition of the conductor’s letters (2002).

Messiaen’s music is always about something. Unlike some of his contemporaries, he was convinced that music could convey or embody meaning and he spoke volumes about what his music was portraying. Anyone thinking that Messiaen’s loquacity leaves little else to discuss would be speedily disavowed by Richard Burton’s absorbing and thought-provoking Messiaen: Texts, Contexts and Intertexts (1937–48).

As Tim Rutherford-Johnson’s fascinating chronicle of western art music notes, histories of ‘contemporary music’ usually begin in 1945. Not so this one.

Some operas generate more thought and controversy than others. Rigoletto, the first of Verdi’s most celebrated central trio of operas, is one of those works that, for all its bizarre and even ludicrous features, hardly needs much in the way of introduction and commentary. Still, the most valuable feature of this latest volume in the Overture Opera series is the printing of the full Italian text, with the excellent translation by William Weaver on facing pages.

Simon Callow hardly needs introducing, whether as actor, director, biographer, contributor to music magazines and creator of one-man shows – including Inside Wagner’s Head, from which this book sprang. He played Mozart in the original stage production of Amadeus, but coming to grips with this most unfathomable, paradoxical and often wildly unpleasant of great composers presents a still greater imaginative challenge.