Sweeping yet meticulous, appreciative without eschewing critical judgments—like Toscanini himself.
The epic life and art of the famed Italian conductor.
In his lifetime, Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957) was considered the greatest conductor of all, and music historian Sachs (Curtis Institute of Music; The Ninth: Beethoven and the World in 1824, 2010, etc.) makes a strong case for that assessment with judicious quotations from contemporary sources. They reveal an exacting taskmaster, feared for his brutal criticisms of singers and orchestra members, who could also be a gentle instructor and a steadfast support—if he felt they were working hard enough. He drove no one harder than himself: a musical prodigy from a family in straitened circumstances, Toscanini won admittance to Parma’s prestigious Royal School of Music when he was 9 and conducted his first orchestra at 19. He gained early success in opera, serving as chief conductor of La Scala in Milan and then New York’s Metropolitan Opera, but he achieved his broadest popular reach leading the NBC Symphony Orchestra’s weekly radio broadcasts beginning in 1937. He awed performers and audiences by conducting without a score and was revered for his attention to detail and fidelity to the composer’s intentions. Sachs creates a well-rounded portrait of this admirable artist and not entirely admirable man, noting that Toscanini proclaimed devotion to his wife while philandering well into his 70s. The biographer has nothing but admiration, however, for Toscanini’s principled anti-fascism, which led him to leave La Scala and to refuse to continue at Bayreuth, where he was the first non-German conductor. The author also praises Toscanini in his prime as an advocate for new music and living composers; if the conductor’s tastes grew more conservative over time, Sachs reminds us that this was part of a broader trend, as classical music and opera receded from the mainstream to rely on an established, mostly 19th-century canon. This minutely detailed chronicle of Toscanini’s jam-packed life offers more than casual readers will want to know, but music lovers will savor every evocative word.
Sweeping yet meticulous, appreciative without eschewing critical judgments—like Toscanini himself.Pub Date: June 27, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63149-271-6
Page Count: 992
Publisher: Liveright/Norton
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2017
This autobiography might almost be said to supply the roots to Wright's famous novel, Native Son.
It is a grim record, disturbing, the story of how — in one boy's life — the seeds of hate and distrust and race riots were planted. Wright was born to poverty and hardship in the deep south; his father deserted his mother, and circumstances and illness drove the little family from place to place, from degradation to degradation. And always, there was the thread of fear and hate and suspicion and discrimination — of white set against black — of black set against Jew — of intolerance. Driven to deceit, to dishonesty, ambition thwarted, motives impugned, Wright struggled against the tide, put by a tiny sum to move on, finally got to Chicago, and there — still against odds — pulled himself up, acquired some education through reading, allied himself with the Communists — only to be thrust out for non-conformity — and wrote continually. The whole tragedy of a race seems dramatized in this record; it is virtually unrelieved by any vestige of human tenderness, or humor; there are no bright spots. And yet it rings true. It is an unfinished story of a problem that has still to be met.
Perhaps this will force home unpalatable facts of a submerged minority, a problem far from being faced.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1945
ISBN: 0061130249
Page Count: 450
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1945
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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