Harvey Sachs

A biography of Arthur Rubinstein's private life, including his love affairs, his rivalry with Vladimir Horowitz, and his relationships with the rich and powerful.

Looks at the life of the influential musician and conductor, discusses his career and political outlook, and describes his unique conducting technique.

Under Mussolini, unions were suppressed, trains ran on time, Italy attacked Ethiopia and most Italian artists kowtowed to the dictatornot least of all, composers, conductors, singers and writers on music. In this useful and interesting survey, Sachs (Toscanini) looks at Italian operas, concerts, conservatories, composers and performers under fascism and shows how they gave in to Mussolini's subtle pressures of patronage and official praiseamong them, composers Casella, Malipiero, Mascagni, Pizzetti and Respighi; singers Gigli, Lauri Volpi and dal Monte; conductors Gui and Molinari and cellist Mainardi. Here too are stories of apolitical musicians like de Sabata and Klemperer, who went on working without questioning events; the few like Toscanini, Dallapiccola and Tita Ruffo who fought fascism or were contemptuous of it; foreign musicians like Paderewski and Stravinsky who acclaimed Mussolini; Bartok, who was probably the most anti-fascist of the major non-Italian composers; and Castelnuovo-Tedesco, who had to leave Italy when anti-Semitic edicts were instituted in 1939.

Profiles of nine acclaimed musicians, including Paganini, Liszt, Paderewski, Casals, and Gould, attempt to explain each artist's popularity.

Chiefly by means of anecdotes, a friend and colleague of Toscanini presents the Italian conductor both as a man and as a musician-at work and at play in America and in Europe, in all his intense concentration on music and in some of his ourbursts of temperament. (Publisher) Parts of this book appeared serially in "Holiday" in slightly different form.

"Some pieces of music survive; most fall into oblivion. What gives the ten masterpieces selected for this book their extraordinary vitality? In this magisterial volume, Harvey Sachs, author of the highly acclaimed biography Toscanini, takes readers into the heart of ten great works of classical music--works that have endured because they were created by composers who had a genius for drawing music out of their deepest wellsprings. These masters--Mozart and Beethoven; Schubert, Schumann, Berlioz, Verdi, and Brahms; Sibelius, Prokofiev, and Stravinsky--communicated their life experiences through music, and through music they universalized the intimate. By expanding our perceptions of these ten pieces--composed in the years between 1784 and 1966--Sachs, in lush, exquisite prose, invites us to consider why music stimulates, disturbs, exalts, and consoles us. He has lived with these masterpieces for a lifetime, and his descriptions of them and the dramatic lives of the composers who wrote them bring a heightened dimension to the musical perceptions of readers who may be casual listeners, students, professional musicians, or anyone in between"--