Inspirational, enlightening and, above all, enjoyable—a revealing window into the private world of consummate music making.
The legendary American pianist recounts the many stages of his storied career.
With its soaring highs and sweeping lows, the story of Fleisher’s life, deftly unveiled here with the help of Washington Post classical music critic Midgette, is as grand as any symphony. Now in his 80s, the author began playing piano in San Francisco at age four, gave his first public recital at eight, debuted with the New York Philharmonic at 16, won the prestigious Queen Elisabeth competition in Brussels in 1952 and made seminal recordings of Brahms and Beethoven with George Szell and the Cleveland Orchestra in the ’50s and early ’60s. However, his meteoric rise as a world-class musician was abruptly halted in 1964, at age 36, when he lost the use of his fourth and fifth fingers on his right hand. What gives this tale a heroic edge is not just Fleisher’s triumphant return to the performance stage at age 66, but the fact that, during the 30-year interval while he grappled with “two fingers that wanted to make a fist all the time,” he refashioned himself, channeling his gargantuan interpretive gifts into becoming an accomplished conductor, arts administrator and teacher. He also gained renown as a specialist in left-handed repertoire, performing Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand so often and well that Musical America named him 1994 Instrumentalist of the Year, two years before his right hand regained most of its former form. Though Fleisher provides an undoubtedly feel-good account, he also cautions readers. “If my story is about anything, it’s about being very careful when your dreams come true,” he writes, and he isn’t afraid to plumb darker moments, nor lightly gloss wayward attempts to overcome the emotional trauma resulting from sudden handicap. Fleisher’s humility and copious anecdotes involving many 20th-century musical lions, such as Schnabel, Klemperer, Szell and Bernstein, combine for a truly winning read.
Inspirational, enlightening and, above all, enjoyable—a revealing window into the private world of consummate music making.Pub Date: Nov. 30, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-385-52918-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 27, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2010
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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