story turns out. (30 b&w photos)
Nobly told saga of how a provincial outsider, bucking family and establishment mistrust, fashioned himself into France's
most daring 19th-century composer. Dr. Berlioz, justly portrayed by Cairns as a devoted father, never stopped decrying his son's rejection of medicine for music. But Hector Berlioz (1803–69), taking Gluck, then Beethoven as spiritual mentors, recognized his calling early, a process that Cairns fleshes out here with piquant asides: What prefigures the critic-creator better than the unwilling med student singing arias during dissections? Young Berlioz is shown beset by his split nature, a Romantic simultaneously driven by fire (or "spleen"), while observed by his alter ego with classical detachment. The factions of musical Paris set the stage for the swift-maturing apprentice's contretemps with the conservative Conservatoire: Cairns examines how Berlioz's orchestrally conceived compositions (where rhythmic complexity plays off timbral polyphony) outraged the status quo. There was no point, however, in trying "to break the magnetic needle because you can't stop it obeying the attraction of the poles"—and at length the weary judges granted Berlioz the Prix de Rome. His travels, mapped out with high local color, furnished matter for his entire oeuvre. The pithy letter-writer and pungent reviewer (ever the composer's advocate) corroborates the gracious narrator-critic and conductor Cairns (The Memoirs of Hector Berlioz, 1969), who has scoured the Berlioz archives for the past 35 years. The tale pauses at the reappearance of English actress Harriet Smithson: After her Ophelia opened Berlioz's eyes to Shakespeare's glories in 1827, she rejected his advances, thus inspiring the id‚e fixe underpinning the innovative Symphonie Fantastique. The 1832 premiere, excitingly re-created, announced the composer's maturity and duly persuaded her to become Berlioz's partner in ill-starred marriage. A sumptuous feast for lovers of music and biography, this volume feeds the appetite to learn the reasons behind how the
story turns out. (30 b&w photos)Pub Date: March 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-520-22199-0
Page Count: 616
Publisher: Univ. of California
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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