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SOLTI ON SOLTI

MEMOIRS

A behind-some-of-the-scenes look at the life and thoughts of one of the 20th century's greatest conductors. If memoirs are biography lite, then this one is successful indeed. A selective recollection of Sir Georg Solti's rise to musical fame, it's an entertaining if not particularly probing walk through this man's impressive musical life. Solti, who died last month at the age of 84, was born in Hungary but lived much of his life in Switzerland, where he relocated at the beginning of WW II. Solti describes his climb through the ranks, beginning his career as a rÇpÇtiteur, or opera coach. Eventually, through hard work and determination, he became the conductor of the Royal Opera at Covent Garden in England and finally of the Chicago Symphony, which he directed for 22 years and where he arguably set a musical standard for professional orchestras that still stands today. The book includes some introspection, such as Solti's admission that early in his career he neglected to really listen to a group before trying to stamp his own personality on it. The book is best when Solti describes his musical philosophies and what it means to be a conductor. Conductors, he writes, ``should always remember our role as interpreters; we are there to serve with the best of our technical abilities the wishes of the composers, who are the creators. The thrill comes when we as interpreters become partners with the composers at the moment the scores comes to life in a performance.'' Conductors and musicians will find Solti's discussion of Beethoven's various symphonies especially illuminating. Unfortunately, these pithy parts are too infrequent, leaving a reader at book's end still wondering exactly what makes Solti tick. An adequate rendering by a man renowned in the musical world for his excellence. (16 pages photos, not seen) (First printing of 50,000)

Pub Date: Oct. 21, 1997

ISBN: 0-679-44596-X

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1997

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IN MY PLACE

From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-374-17563-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992

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THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...

Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").

Pub Date: May 15, 1972

ISBN: 0205632645

Page Count: 105

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972

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