This judicious compilation of biographies and analysis is a thoroughly engaging read.
Esteemed music critic Sachs gets personal with this effervescent homage to some favorite works of “life-giving and affirmative” classical music. He chose these pieces, all in different genres, because he felt he had “something useful to say about them,” and he deftly shows how biography informed the music, each piece neatly fitting into its time and place. The more musically inclined reader will especially appreciate the brief explications of their key components. Mozart wrote his “profoundly moving” Piano Concerto in G Major in 1784 during a hectic and busy period; it was a “work of exceptional beauty and depth” that exhibited “previously unexplored regions.” Beethoven composed Trio in B-flat major, a “work of great breadth,” in 1811, 20 years after Mozart’s death. Its debut, an attending composer wrote, “was not a treat,” for the “piano was badly out of tune.” But Beethoven “minded little” because he was now deaf which, Sachs writes, likely led “him into previously unexplored regions of musical creativity.” One of the torchbearer’s at Beethoven’s funeral was Schubert, who, while ill, would compose his last and “greatest” string quartet, in G major. “I propose the hypothesis,” writes the author, “is ‘about’…trying to accept the nothingness of death.” Hector Berlioz used Goethe as a “springboard” for his Damnation of Faust, which “arouses admiration, fascination, and joy,” and he had the “audacity” to send Goethe a copy of the score. Verdi’s opera Don Carlo, writes Sachs, was “another milestone in the extraordinary biography of a master whose beginnings had been exceptionally unpromising.” After enthusiastically delving into the String Quintet in G Major by Brahms, the “spiritual devastation” of Sibelius’ Fourth Symphony, and Prokofiev’s Piano Sonata No. 8, Sachs concludes with a section on the “pungent physicality” of Stravinsky’s Requiem Canticles, “among the most intensely spiritual pieces of the twentieth century."
This judicious compilation of biographies and analysis is a thoroughly engaging read.Pub Date: Oct. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-63149-518-2
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2021
PERSPECTIVES
Everything about Sabathia is larger than life, yet he tells his story with honesty and humility.
One of the best pitchers of his generation—and often the only Black man on his team—shares an extraordinary life in baseball.
A high school star in several sports, Sabathia was being furiously recruited by both colleges and professional teams when the death of his grandmother, whose Social Security checks supported the family, meant that he couldn't go to college even with a full scholarship. He recounts how he learned he had been drafted by the Cleveland Indians in the first round over the PA system at his high school. In 2001, after three seasons in the minor leagues, Sabathia became the youngest player in MLB (age 20). His career took off from there, and in 2008, he signed with the New York Yankees for seven years and $161 million, at the time the largest contract ever for a pitcher. With the help of Vanity Fair contributor Smith, Sabathia tells the entertaining story of his 19 seasons on and off the field. The first 14 ran in tandem with a poorly hidden alcohol problem and a propensity for destructive bar brawls. His high school sweetheart, Amber, who became his wife and the mother of his children, did her best to help him manage his repressed fury and grief about the deaths of two beloved cousins and his father, but Sabathia pursued drinking with the same "till the end" mentality as everything else. Finally, a series of disasters led to a month of rehab in 2015. Leading a sober life was necessary, but it did not tame Sabathia's trademark feistiness. He continued to fiercely rile his opponents and foment the fighting spirit in his teammates until debilitating injuries to his knees and pitching arm led to his retirement in 2019. This book represents an excellent launching point for Jay-Z’s new imprint, Roc Lit 101.
Everything about Sabathia is larger than life, yet he tells his story with honesty and humility.Pub Date: July 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-13375-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Roc Lit 101
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.
Rootin’-tootin’ history of the dry-gulchers, horn-swogglers, and outright killers who populated the Wild West’s wildest city in the late 19th century.
The stories of Wyatt Earp and company, the shootout at the O.K. Corral, and Geronimo and the Apache Wars are all well known. Clavin, who has written books on Dodge City and Wild Bill Hickok, delivers a solid narrative that usefully links significant events—making allies of white enemies, for instance, in facing down the Apache threat, rustling from Mexico, and other ethnically charged circumstances. The author is a touch revisionist, in the modern fashion, in noting that the Earps and Clantons weren’t as bloodthirsty as popular culture has made them out to be. For example, Wyatt and Bat Masterson “took the ‘peace’ in peace officer literally and knew that the way to tame the notorious town was not to outkill the bad guys but to intimidate them, sometimes with the help of a gun barrel to the skull.” Indeed, while some of the Clantons and some of the Earps died violently, most—Wyatt, Bat, Doc Holliday—died of cancer and other ailments, if only a few of old age. Clavin complicates the story by reminding readers that the Earps weren’t really the law in Tombstone and sometimes fell on the other side of the line and that the ordinary citizens of Tombstone and other famed Western venues valued order and peace and weren’t particularly keen on gunfighters and their mischief. Still, updating the old notion that the Earp myth is the American Iliad, the author is at his best when he delineates those fraught spasms of violence. “It is never a good sign for law-abiding citizens,” he writes at one high point, “to see Johnny Ringo rush into town, both him and his horse all in a lather.” Indeed not, even if Ringo wound up killing himself and law-abiding Tombstone faded into obscurity when the silver played out.
Buffs of the Old West will enjoy Clavin’s careful research and vivid writing.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-21458-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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