Classical category: 3244 books

Rachmaninoff’s work was scorned by the musical establishment as hopelessly old-fashioned and emotionally over-indulgent but never failed to find popular acclaim—including being used as the soundtrack to the film Brief Encounter. Who was this taciturn genius? This book investigates Rachmaninoff’s intense and melodramatic life.

Bálint András Varga makes available here for the first time in English nineteen extended interviews with some of the most notable figures in music from the past fifty years, as well as lively snippets from interviews Varga conducted with thirteen other equally renowned musicians. The interviewees...

Throughout his career as composer, conductor, and pianist, Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) was an intensely private individual. When Bertensson and Leyda’s 1956 biography appeared, it lifted the veil of secrecy from several areas of Rachmaninoff’s life, especially concerning the genesis of his...

Vladimir de Pachmann was perhaps history’s most notorious pianist. Widely regarded as the greatest player of Chopin’s works, Pachmann embedded comedic elements—be it fiddling with his piano bench or flirting with the audience—within his classic piano recitals to alleviate his own anxiety over...

Shostakovich: The Man and His Work is a rich and compelling biography of one of the most famous composers of all time. Author Ivan Martynov brings together extensive research, including interviews and conversations with Shostakovich himself, to shed light on the man behind the music.   This edition was translated from Russian by T. Guralsky and includes a list of musical works.

This edition features a linked Table of Contents CONTENTS PREFACE CHAPTER I. BIRTH—ANCESTRY—EARLY YEARS CHAPTER II. VIENNA—1750-1760 CHAPTER III. EISENSTADT—1761-1766 CHAPTER IV. ESTERHAZ—1766-1790 CHAPTER V. FIRST LONDON VISIT—1791-1792 CHAPTER VI. SECOND LONDON VISIT—1794-1795 CHAPTER...

Vie de Beethoven est un livre écrit par l'écrivain français Romain Rolland (1866 - 1944), qui relate une belle biographie du génial compositeur allemand. Ce livre numérique présente l'édition intégrale et comporte une table des matières...

The authority for Haydn's life is the biography begun by the late Dr Pohl, and completed after his death by E.V. Mandyczewski. To this work, as yet untranslated, every subsequent writer is necessarily indebted, and the present volume, which I may fairly claim to be the fullest life of Haydn that has...

**ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award winner A fresh look at the life of Mozart during his imperial years by one of the world's leading Mozart scholars.** "I now stand at the gateway to my fortune," Mozart wrote in a letter of 1790. He had entered into the service of Emperor Joseph II...

No nineteenth-century composer had more diverse ties to his contemporary world than Franz Liszt (1811-1886). At various points in his life he made his home in Vienna, Paris, Weimar, Rome, and Budapest. In his roles as keyboard virtuoso, conductor, master teacher, and abbé, he reinvented the concert...

The second volume in Alan Walker's magisterial biography of Franz Liszt. "You can't help but keep turning the pages, wondering how it will all turn out: and Walker's accumulated readings of Liszt's music have to be taken seriously indeed."-D. Kern Holoman, New York Review of Books "A...

Robert Schumann is one of the most intriguing-and enigmatic-composers of the nineteenth century. Extraordinarily gifted in both music and literature, many of his compositions were inspired by poetry and novels. For much of his life he was better known as a music critic than as a composer. But whether...

In a series of lively essays that tell us much not only about the phenomenon that was Franz Liszt but also about the musical and cultural life of nineteenth-century Europe, Alan Walker muses on aspects of Liszt's life and work that he was unable to explore in his acclaimed three-volume biography of...

Lies and Epiphanies offers case studies of "inspiration" in five composers -- Richard Wagner, Gustav Mahler, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Richard Strauss, and Alban Berg. Their own tales of their epiphanies played a determining role in the reception history of their works: the finale of Mahler's...