These conversations about the art of conducting between Vermeil, a French journalist, and Boulez demonstrate that the fanatic conductor and composer (now 70) hasn't mellowed: He remains an aggressive, ungenerous partisan with a bitchy wit. But they also demonstrate why he is one of the two or three greatest conductors of the second half of the century. The talks, which took place in 1988 and are presented in an excellent translation, do not form an autobiography: There are few recollections of composers or performers, and very little about Boulez's life when he's not on a podium. Instead, this is, as the subtitle suggests, a guide to the profession of conducting, and Boulez's advice, ranging from the selection of repertoire to the mastery of gestures, from handling rehearsals to dealing with audiences, is brilliant. Boulez sounds too relentless, however, and too humorless to be very good company. He remains an intensely private man, without a glittering array of styles or sins, fiercely holding to professional competence as his ideal, and dedicated to the total domination of music by such modern composers as Webern, Berg, and Stravinsky. He finds Verdi and Tchaikovsky, Dvìrak and Puccini unfit for his programs. Boulez reiterates here that he wants them out of the repertoire to make room for music many find barren, boring, and arrogant. The volume also includes an appreciation of Boulez by Paul Griffiths, a conductor and a former pupil of the master, and a complete discography. These conversations give insight into why Boulez's conducting is at a genius level: He has an unparalleled grasp of the scores, a fiercely intelligent command over the orchestra, and is able as a result to create concerts and recordings that seem nothing short of marvels.
Pub Date: June 1, 1996
ISBN: 1-57467-007-7
Page Count: 264
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1996
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
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
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