Concerto Conversations: With a 68-minute CD (Charles Eliot Norton Lectures) [Hardcover]

Joseph Kerman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 29, 1999 | Series: Charles Eliot Norton Lectures (Book 1997)

The concerto has attracted relatively little attention as a genre, Joseph Kerman observes, and his urbane and wide-ranging Norton Lectures fill the gap in a way that will delight all music listeners. Kerman addresses the full range of the concerto repertory, treating both the general and the particular. His perceptive commentary on individual works--with illustrative performances on the accompanying CD--is alive with enthusiasm, intimations, and insights into the spirit of concerto.

Concertos model human relationships, according to Kerman, and his description of the conversation between solo instrument and orchestra brings this observation vividly to life. What does the solo instrument do when it first enters in a concerto? How do composers balance claims of solo-orchestra contrast and solo virtuosity? When do they deploy the sumptuous musical textures that only concertos can provide? Kerman's unexpected answers offer a new understanding of the concerto and a stimulus to enhanced listening.

In language that the Boston Globe's Richard Dyer calls "always delightfully vivid," Kerman conducts readers and listeners into the conversations that concertos so eloquently enact. Amid the musical forces at play, he renews the dialogue of music lovers with the language of the concerto--the familiar, the lesser-known, the cherished, and the undervalued. The CD packaged with the book contains movements from works that Kerman treats most intensively--by Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Bartók, Stravinsky, and Prokofiev.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

For more than 40 years, since his seminal book Opera as Drama, Joseph Kerman has been among the most perceptive and lucid commentators on music. Readers new to his work will find a highly personable companion in Concerto Conversations, while those who already know it can appreciate a late-period distillation of his methods. In typical fashion, Kerman begins not with a preface of introduction but with a chapter on beginnings. There is a general division of the dynamic between soloist and orchestra into the concepts of "reciprocity" versus "polarity," but the book is really more a collection of highly individual observations about specific concertos. Kerman touches on some works lightly and deftly while giving others a fuller treatment. Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto, Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto (Kerman, blessedly, takes Tchaikovsky very seriously), Stravinsky's Concerto for Piano and Winds, and Mozart's D Minor Piano Concerto get the widest overviews.

We find Kerman's love of language throughout: "High noon! One can almost see solo and orchestra glaring at each other" in the Beethoven; the strings in the Tchaikovsky are "sisterly, and secular." Kerman tosses off provocative ideas along the way: the concerto has already postdated the symphony, the great contrapuntist Bach used a fugal introduction to a concerto only once, and particular events in the life of Liszt affected his piano concertos. Kerman makes an important point in contrasting virtuosity with bravura. These elegant, concise lectures were first conceived for the Norton series at Harvard. A 12-track, 69-minute CD of musical examples (along with extensive musical quotations in an appendix) is included. --William R. Braun

From Library Journal

What a pity this engaging, intelligent book is not a multimedia CD or video series (one of the publication formats of Leonard Bernstein's Norton lectures). Kerman (Write All These Down: Essays on Music) knows that successful music appreciation sessions need "less talk and more music." His lectures provided more music than is found on the accompanying CD (and unlike the CD, they included video clips as well). The book does have photographs and musical examples, but they're crowded at the back. Cues to CD tracks or notated examples appear in the text, but readers must flip pages and hit CD player pause buttons to follow Kerman's ideasAwhich move from concerto beginnings and endings to the reciprocal interplay of soloists and orchestra ("conversations") to treatment of all this and more by various composers. With added text (to compensate for the missing music), this book would have found readers among musical connoisseurs who appreciate Kerman's imaginative skill in making connections and his unique combination of erudition and accessibility. For large libraries that can handle books with CDs.ABonnie Jo Dopp, Univ. of Maryland Lib., College Park
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (October 29, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674158911
• ISBN-13: 978-0674158917
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 7.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,896,464 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The conversation continues January 29, 2001

By joseph m

Format:Hardcover

This is an exceptional book. Kerman mixes just the right amount of scholarship and anecdote to satisfy a reader who prefers either approach. His metaphor of concerto as part of an ongoing musical conversation, not just between orchestra and solo instrument but also from composer to composer and epoch to epoch, lets the reader become part of a tradition known almost exclusively to composers of concerti. By the end of this book, one has certainly cultivated something important with regards to music appreciation of concerti, be they nudge or virtuoso. I even found myself "rooting" for this musical form in the end, hoping that composers today keep the conversation alive--and before this book, I was indifferent to the whole tradition.

4.0 out of 5 stars A short book packed with musical insights May 13, 2009

By Roochak

Format:Paperback

Given the popularity of the concerto -- it isn't easy to attend a symphony concert that doesn't have one on the program -- you'd think there'd be a wider-ranging conversation in print about the musical relationships between soloist(s) and orchestra that doesn't just stop at all-purpose words like "dramatic." It's useful, though, to keep the metaphor of drama in mind as we listen, for as Joseph Kerman argues in these lectures, there's a good deal of roleplaying going on in concertos.

But first, in describing the kinds of duality we hear in them, Kerman suggests the terms "polarity," "reciprocity" and "diffusion." Polarity, in which orchestra and solo play different musical material without sharing it, is typical of the early 18th century; reciprocity, in which the concerto agents share musical material between them, is typical of the Classical and Romantic eras; and diffusion witnesses the integration of soloist and orchestra in much post-Romantic music.

Within these modes, Kerman anthropomorphises solo and orchestra into any number of roles the music suggests: "EAVESDROPPER, TEASE, SURVIVOR, VICTIM, MOURNER, MINX, LOVER, CRITIC, EDITOR..." It's fun, for example, to read of piano and orchestra in the third movement of Mozart's D minor concerto locked together like pitbulls, or to see Chaikovsky's (yes, Kerman spells it that way) violin concerto described as the quasi-narrative of a mistress whose servant, the orchestra, evolves into her critic and equal partner.

Speaking of critics, in particular those who seem embarrassed by virtuoso display, Kerman construes virtuosity to encompass bravura (chops), mimesis (mimicry, especially vocal), and spontaneity, and argues that in the absence of display, you don't have a concerto; you have a symphony with an obbligato solo part. Spontaneity (or the ability to make through-composed music sound spontaneous) is the essence of virtuosity. He praises the Liszt piano concertos ("a hard sell," he admits) and leaves us with the wonderful reminder that "listening to flawed virtuosity is like watching college football -- a site of empathy and rapture for fans and alumni, but noplace on the scale of aesthetic experience."

The CD of concerto movements that comes with this book is, of course, useless until you convert it to MP3 files. How else are you gonna cue up those musical examples when you're reading on the go?