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(More customer reviews)Harold C. Schonberg
The Glorious Ones
Classical Music's Legendary Performers
Times Books, Hardback, 1985.
8vo. xviii, 509 pp. First Edition.
Also published in paperback as The Virtuosi.
Contents
Preface [x-xviii]
1. The Castrati. Lungs of Men, Voices of Women.
2. Angelica Catalani. Pyrotechnics and Greed.
3. A Digression on Travel, the Industrial Revolution, and Related Matters.
4. Giuditta Pasta, Maria Malibran, Henrietta Sontag, and Giulia Grisi. Bel Canto.
5. Giovanni-Battista Rubini, Mario, and Luigi Lablache. Bengal Rockets, Sweetness, and Cannonades.
6. A Digression on Money.
7. Nicolo Paganini. Spawn of the Devil.
8. Franz Liszt. The Eagle of the Piano.
9. Jenny Lind. The Moral Lady.
10. Joseph Joachim. The Incorruptible.
11. Anton Rubinstein. Russian Elemental.
12. Adelina Patti. The Queen of the Song.
13. Jean and Edouard de Reszke. The Singing Brothers.
14. Ignaz Paderewski. The Aureoled Pole.
15. Pablo de Sarasate, Eugene Ysaye, Jan Kubelik, and Fritz Kreisler. A Quartet of Violinists.
16. Nellie Melba. The Singing Machine.
17. Enrico Caruso. The Tenor of Tenors.
18. A Digression on Tenors.
19. Josef Hofmann. The Polish Keyboard Master.
20. Sergei Rachmaninoff. The Russian Master.
21. John McCormack. Irish Gold.
22. Feodor Shaliapin. Bass from Mother Russia.
23. Arturo Toscanini. The Maestro.
24. Jascha Heifetz. Unruffled Perfection.
25. Kirsten Flagstad and Lauritz Melchior. The Two Wagnerians.
26. Arthur Rubinstein. Joie de Vivre
27. Vladimir Horowitz. Electrical Energy.
28. Maria Callas. The Will to Succeed.
29. A Digression on Health and Ills.
30. Leonard Bernstein, Herbert von Karajan, and Georg Solti. Timebeaters Three.
31. Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo. Mano a Mano.
Bibliography
Index
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''Marion Bauer, one of my music teachers, once said something I never forgot: ''If you are interested in a subject and do not know as much about it as you would like to, write a book about it. By the time you have finished the research, you might even be an authority on the subject.''
Harold Schonberg simply has it and that's that. He has that all too rare ability so very few writers have: to catch my attention with his very first paragraph and compels me to read on and on and on - until I see the back cover with a smile of deep satisfaction but also of certain sadness because a wonderful adventure has come to an end. Surely that adventure will bear a great deal of re-reading but it will never be quite the same; on the other hand, it will always leave me at least a little bit more spiritually enriched than before.
''The Glorious Ones'' is a book about the superstars in the history of classical music. Not all of them of course, but most, yes. The lovers of somewhat different type of music might be surprised that the musical super-stardom does not start with Beatles and Led Zeppelin but that happens to be true. The classical music lovers might too be surprised that the first superstars came some one century before Liszt and Paganini. These were the castrati: the ''physical freaks'' with ''lungs of men'' and ''voices of women'' who had lost something of their manhood at expense of probably the greatest vocal art that ever existed. Harold Schonberg makes quite a good case that since the time of castrati, who could well manage numerous trills and figurations in a single breath well over a minute long, the art of singing has been in constant decline. Incidentally, the greatest part of the book is dedicated to opera singers: from Angelica Catalani and the bel canto superstars from the beginning of XIX century, through Luigi Lablach, Jenny Lind and Adelina Patti, all the way through Caruso, Shaliapin, until Domingo and Pavarotti. To counterbalance all that vocal brilliance there are a good many legendary masters of the keyboard - the specialty of Harold Schonberg - starting with the mythical figure of Franz Liszt and finishing with the last two great pianists of the so called Romantic tradition - Arthur Rubinstein and Vladimir Horowitz. Violin lovers will not be disappointed, either: Paganini is followed by Joseph Joachim, Pablo de Saraste and Eugene Ysaye, until we reach Jascha Heifetz. It should be noted, for those who already have other books by the same author, that Harold Schonberg is always quite to the point and marvelously avoids any repetitions. Colossal figure in the XIX century music like Franz Liszt, for example, has a chapter of his own not only here but also in Harold Schonberg's The Great Pianists and The Great Conductors. Though certain amount of repetitions is impossible to avoid, all three chapters are well worth reading since Liszt certainly was a great composer and a fabulous pianist, as well as important conductor and one of the most legendary superstars of all times - and Harold Schonberg has something to say about any of these incarnations. But what is there to say about superstars except tons of gossip? Quite a lot, as it turned out.
As all of Harold Schonberg's books, ''The Glorious Ones'' has a glorious preface that makes me eager to devour the whole book. In just a few pages Mr Schonberg gives vivid impression of his subject asking a number of compelling questions. What makes one a superstar? Are superstars always better musicians than the ordinary stars? Are their fees always astronomical? Did they have impresarios or agents in the bygone centuries? Were all superstars superb technicians? Were all of them musical prodigies? What is the nature of the child prodigy? Some of these questions, like the last one, still await their conclusive answer. For most, however, Harold Schonberg has if not the answers, at all events a great deal of food for thought to start with. The superstars were almost always a very fine musicians and superb technicians. But one thing they had without any exceptions was the magic; the charisma, the charm, the mystique, call it what you like; in other words, that ability to communicate (sub)consciously with the audience. Sometimes that charisma was so strong that efficiently compensated for significant technical deficiencies, Paderewski among the pianists and Callas among the singers being perhaps the most telling examples. Sometimes that personal aura, coupled with incredible technical skill, more than make for the lack of musical taste, like in the cases of Catalani and Paganini. Again in that fascinating preface, Harold Schonberg reflects on performance practice and how it did change since the times of the Romantic tradition when textual fidelity and sticking to the printed note were by far less important than the emotional impact of the music. Mr Schonberg is obviously a Romantic at heart and he often makes his point in a remarkably perceptive, even profound, way:
"A performer is no good at all if he does not express himself as much as he expresses his concept of the composers meaning. If ever there was a symbiotic relationship, this is it. But today, by and large, artists are literal-minded and careful, and there is dreadful unanimity of approach. Performers seem much too worried about the text and not enough about its message."
I could never say it better, but allow myself to add emphasis to "his". I would never have expected to see such demolition of the so called intellectual performance practice in print, done by an eminent music critic at that. The whole concept of expressing the "composer's ideas" by sticking to the notes with fanatical zeal until every performance sound exactly like any other, all that intellectual concept is a hell of a hokum. In essence, the modern performance practice is trying to compensate for the lack of personality and originality, in other words - for the lack of true artistry. Indeed, this is something like a main theme in all of Schonberg's books and, for my part at least, one of the things that makes them indispensable and absolutely compelling.
Harold Schonberg has often been blamed for his writing style being a sort of journalistic hackwork. I dare disagree. It is true that in "The Glorious Ones" the usually informal and chatty style of Mr Schonberg is even more so; not so seldom is he with his tongue in cheek, naughty, mischievous or even a trifle malicious. All this makes him not just readable, but a huge fun to be read. It is hard to believe that something so funny really can be of any great value - but it happens to be true in this case. Behind the facetious facade of Harold Schonberg's writing, there is tremendous knowledge, erudition and industry; he gathered the tons of information for his books not only from a staggering number of other books (listed in a huge bibliography) but also from numerous contemporary periodicals. Moreover, never is Mr Schonberg afraid to delve deeper into the personality of his superstars and more often than not he demonstrates perspicacity and insight into human nature of unusual degree. He always searches for the human being behind the superstar, and very often gives extremely insightful and perceptive character sketches. All that is skilfully intertwined with one hilarious episode after another with a roaring climax reached in "A Digression on Tenors" where, in great detail, is launched the theory that tenors are not ordinary humans but belong to quite another race, apparently because their heads, due to acoustical considerations, contain much more empty spaces than the heads of people. No matter how much Harold Schonberg may be absorbed in such lovely nonsense, or rubs his hands in glee relating backstage scandals, he never overdoes it. I am ready to...Read more›
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