Customer Reviews

America's Concertmasters (Detroit Monographs in Musicology/Studies in Music, No. 51)

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While this is a much needed look at American concertmasters over the years, it also serves as a fascinating and highly readable history of virtually every major orchestra in North America. Along the way we're treated to extensive profiles of Boston's Joseph Silverstein, Cleveland's Rafael Druian and William Preucil, Detroit's Emmanuelle Boisvert, New York's Glenn Dicterow and many others.

Deserves a place in every music lover's library.

While being a history, the book is even more vividly an account of what current and recent past concertmasters have to say about playing as, and also auditioning to be, concertmaster. The interview with David Kim gives a bow-by-bow account of his own preparation for the Chicago Symphony audition. (He is concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra, but his Chicago experience led him to it.)

Other valuable aspects are the many descriptions by the concertmasters of lesser known but worthwhile solo violin repertoire and new composers to watch; accounts of which conductors led which orchestras and what it is like to play under them; and of course who was concertmaster when. The astute notetaker can compile a valuable annotated repertory list and a great list for choosing CDs based on comparing the sounds different conductors get from essentially the same orchestra, how orchestras differ with the same conductor, and comparing concertmasters.

I enthusiastically recommend this book!

Yes, it is not a name coincidence, the author of this book is indeed the daughter of the legendary Mischa Mischakoff - arguably the nec plus ultra of an unsurpassed generation of US/Canadian concertmasters of Russian and/or Jewish origin.

Anne Mischakoff Heiles has already made her penmanship known in two books. I am not familiar at all (yet) with the earlier "Khandoshkin and the beginning of Russian string music," but I did read her previous book, a biography of her father, and I was already impressed. Writing a biography of a dear family member can prove a tricky business, as it is easy to give in to lachrymose recollections which may seem relevant to the author, but not so much so to the emotionally uninvolved reader. Far from falling into that trap, the author has offered a never hagiographic, always well-argued, factual vision of who her father was for the world of music, rather than for herself. This other excellent book - not the one I am reviewing here, but the one at

http://www.amazon.com/Mischa-Mischakoff-Concertmaster-Monographs-Musicology/dp/089990131X/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_2

- was, if anything, at least matched by the new work, America's Concertmasters. A tremendous amount of first-quality research has gone into this op, and the writing is, as within the Mischakoff bio, both classy and easy to follow. I really don't believe we need the thirtieth biography of Toscanini (or the one thousandth biography of Wagner) anytime soon, but this book did truly fill a gap yearning to be filled.

Of course, Mischa Mischakoff's imposing figure appears again, as it should, in chapters dedicated to orchestras he served in - including New York, Philadelphia, Detroit (NBC doesn't have a separate chapter) -, but as part of a more intricate tree of illustrious concertmasters, many of whom of European origin.

The book combines in a great way never irrelevant, often charming bits of trivia and a lot of substance regarding the life meaning and the professional challenges a concertmaster strives for and meets. Not only aspiring concertmasters, but also (or especially) many conductors could learn a great amount of professionally and ethically valuable things from Anne Mischakoff-Heiles' book.

While the author lets mostly the voices of the musicians speak through her writing, the patient reader will be rewarded, among others, with an initial essay on the forming of the concertmaster concept, going back to Bach and Gluck's time, as well as an "Afterword - Paradox of the Concertmaster Position," a well thought essay on the historical consistencies and the concurrent historical changes which, to a great extent, have reduced the importance of the concertmaster in modern orchestras, without annihilating the essence of their vocation.

Appendixes include a fascinating (not surprisingly, heavy on Stradivarius gems) list of violins famous concertmasters used, and a list of musical premieres specific concertmasters have been involved in.

Highly recommended, a one-of-a-kind book.