Customer Reviews

The Life and Death of Classical Music: Featuring the 100 Best and 20 Worst Recordings Ever Made

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A fascinating and absorbing read, Lebrecht's expose into the demise of classical music is as revealing as it is heartbreaking. Ten years ago, I was fortunate enough to work at one of the top classical radio stations in the US--(KDFC Classical 102.1 FM in San Francisco)there, I acquired a passion for classical music, reading Grammaphone and the Penguin Guide to Classial Compact Disc's with a fervor as children do with comic books. In short, it was an education in many ways--music as an art form, the aquisition of a refined taste, and a practical education into a highly unpredicatable business.

Lebrecht's book sheds light on all the vanities, egos, and personalities in the industry--past and present. Here is Karajan--masestro grandioso--feared but respected, whose net worth at his death was estimated at over $500 million with most of it derived from reissues of his earlier and better performances. Here is Bernstein, who, considered a somewhat of a second-tier conductor, plagued with insecurities and pretentious self-doubt, would often exasperate orchestras without punctuality or form (often forcing entire orchestras to wait an hour or more before he took to the podium) with his disdain for the inviolate nature of some works that are an inherent part of a country's national identity. Although venerated as a national treasure, Lebrecht paints another dimension to Bernstein; he recalls how the conductor completely botched a recording session with BBC Orchestra to produce one of the "worst classical recordings of all time"--Elgar's Enigma Variations in 1982. A very sloppy and unprofessional approach to a job overall and a personal insult to the dead composer's memory and the English.

What is interesting about this book is how Lebrecht puts it all together; the rivalries between the major labels: Decca, DG, Phillips, EMI and their producers scrambling to be the first to sign an exclusive contract with the industry's power players--Bernstein, Solti, Rattle, among others; how "crossover" discs and performances(a Bono and Pavarotti duo easily comes to mind)ultimately spelled doom for serious classical music fan; how the major labels used sexy CD cover art of young and talented artists like Vanessa Mae, Anne Sophie Mutter and Charlotte Church to increase sales of an already declining market, and the unexpected rise of Klaus Heymann and NAXOS. Here is the budget CD tycoon who taught all the "majors" a valuable lesson by hiring lesser known and Eastern European orchestras looking for work and produced several Grammaphone award-winning discs with Vivaldi's Four Seasons taking away honors as one of the best-selling classical recordings ever produced topping sales of 1.16 million besting even the venerated Arthur Fiedler of the Boston Pops!

If you ever wanted to know the in and outs of a business as fascinating as the classical music industry, this is a must read.

Norman Lebrecht belongs to a rare group of people who not only know more about classical music than most music encyclopedias but also are extremely gifted with writing. All his books are fascinating and even if the reader doesn't always want to agree with his often pessimistic views of this art form's future, one cannot brush aside the facts he so powerfully presents.

"Life and Death of Classical Music" is two books in one: exactly a half of it is dedicated to the history of the recording business, the other listing one hundred recordings that were in Mr. Lebrecht's opinion milestones in the recorded history, plus another twenty that should never have been made. The first part tells generally previously unheard behind-the-scenes stories of all the leading recording companies, their bigwigs both in management and their cash cows, the conductors and other artists, since the very beginning of the industry. The author manages to weave all this together in an irresistibly interesting story that reads like the best suspense novel. As the title indicates, the story doesn't end with a 'they lived happily ever after' but paints a rather dark picture of the collapse of the industry, well documented by nose-diving global sales figures, and the reader at this point is not surprised by the reasons. It is hard to put the book down during the first 150 pages as the writing is so captivating.

I read the 'worst' list before starting with the 'best', as I found it more tempting. Many music lovers have traditionally bought recordings, both LPs and CDs, based on the familiarity and reputation of the artists on the cover. The reader is in for a shock as the 'mistakes' chapter has many of the same stars featured, but as every recording, both good and bad, is discussed in a form of a short essay, the reasons for Mr. Lebrecht's choices become evident. The 'masterpiece' list in a chronological order. Some of the early recordings may not be familiar to many of today's listeners, although they ought to be. Editing wasn't possible in the early days, and it is a well documented fact that some of the greatest names might have 20-30 takes of the same 4+ minutes that would fit on a side of a 78 rpm disc, until they were pleased with the results. With magnetic tape splicing gave a never-before-seen opportunity to fix mistakes and with today's technology even individual 16th notes can be corrected and a faulty pitch raised or lowered. This means is that a recording can sound equally good whether it is done by musicians in Moscow, Russia or Moscow, Idaho.

The late Finnish music critic (of the Helsingin Sanomat) and journalist Seppo Heikinheimo called Norman Lebrecht "the world's best expert of conductors" in his posthumously published memoirs and I would like to agree with this. This new book (published under the title "Maestros, Masterpieces, and Madness" in the U.K.) gives readers an amazing amount of insight into the business of conducting, the enormous egos of the maestros and star soloists alike, and details about the crazy financial arrangements which at the end brought the 'house of cards' down. This book is a must-read to anyone involved in classical music, whether a musician or just an ordinary listener and lover of the art form.

Lebrecht has been placing lilies on the grave of classical music for some time now. A more accurate title would be "The Life and Death of Classical Recording," as classical music itself is alive and well. It is an observable fact that the traditional CD is probably on its way out as a "pop" music vehicle; it would be unrealistic to expect classical recording to be unaffected by the ongoing shift to MP3 and other computer formats. Like the "Death" card of the Tarot deck, signifying not death so much as change, the industry is not dying but evolving in unexpected directions. What must be upsetting for those involved is the unpredictability of change - who, in 1975, would have predicted the prevalence of hip-hop today? The same forces are reflected in classical music, on a smaller scale.

The relative popularity of classical music in the 20th century's midpoint was an anomaly. Through the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic eras, composers were dependent on patronage (Schubert may have been the first serious composer to support himself, primarily through the popularity of his songs for the Biedermeier set, rather than his "serious" music). The typical 19th century European peasant, like his modern American counterpart, may have gone his entire life without hearing a Beethoven piano sonata. The majority, then as now, had their "popular" music.

Lebrecht manages to unearth endless troves of fascinating minutiae. For instance, he relates how Phillips, the inventors of the cassette, partnered with Sony to develop the compact disc. The Dutch wanted the new format to be the same size as the cassette, however, the favorite piece of the Sony chairman's wife was Beethoven's 9th Symphony, too long to fit onto a disk of that size. To accommodate it, the disk's diameter was increased to allow 80 minutes of music, with the center hole corresponding to the size of the smallest Dutch coin.

The lists of the "100 best" and "20 worst" recordings don't exactly complement each other. The "100" are sometimes, but not always, the "best;" Lebrecht chose many recordings primarily for their significance, be it artistic, historical, or political. The "20" were not chosen for their lack of significance; in most cases, they represent bad ideas or poor execution by people who should have known better.

Unlike a lot of musicians and music lovers, I generally quite like Norman Lebrecht, find him one of the more interesting and provocative writers about the music scene, and have read several of his books. The first part of the book is interesting for his account of the many behind-the-scenes goings-on that have gone into the making of so many recordings, the personalities and egos of the musicians making them and, perhaps more critically, the enormously small stakes involved. Even though I've often been amazed that commercial enterprises would spend so much money producing recordings that at best will appeal to five percent of the record-buying public, it's still astonishing to learn just how few copies some classical recordings, even by major artists, tend to sell.

My major criticism of this book (and indeed most of Lebrecht's books) is that it's sloppy. He could use a good editor and fact-checker to catch such obvious errors as saying that around 1970 the Boston Symphony was still a non-union orchestra that worked "cheap." He also criticizes companies for continuing to issue new performances of the same repertory (fair enough), but then also ridicules them when they make recordings of less familiar repertoire that fail to sell in order to satisfy egomaniac conductors. Also, he often strings together anecdotes with very little thematic context or chronological coherence, often jumping several decades in the space of a sentence or two; if you aren't at least vaguely aware of a lot of these events, you'll be entirely lost (then again, if you're not vaguely aware of them, you probably won't be reading this book).

As for his 100 best/20 worst list, his 100 best has a few whose significance I would question, and excludes some others I would add. I had a few disagreements with the "20 Worst" list, though: I LOVE Simon Rattle's "The Jazz Album" for the amazing clarinetist Michael Collins and the only performance that has ever made me like Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue). He also calls Gidon Kremer's Beethoven Violin Concerto recording (with the Schnittke cadenzas) a failure, not because it's a bad recording or was a bad idea, but because Philips apparently chickened out of promoting the novel cadenzas. I'm more in agreement with him about Bernstein's disastrous Enigma Variations. He probably should have added Bernstein's recording of West Side Story with Kiri Te Kanawa and Jose Carreras.

It's also important to point out, as others have, that the title is misleading: Lebrecht is talking mostly about the life and death of the classical record industry, rather than classical music itself (though he does make the usual points about declining audiences).

Definitely worth reading if you're into this sort of thing.

The other reviewers provide an adequate overview of Norman Lebrecht's THE LIFE AND DEATH OF CLASSICAL MUSIC, so I'll limit myself here to a few particular observations.

It has been pointed out that the title is off-kilter, since the book focuses on the vicissitudes of classical RECORDING rather than those of classical music as such. A similar criticism can be leveled against Lebrecht's THE MAESTRO MYTH: the title invites one to expect that the author will do something courageously revolutionary, viz., make a case against the importance of the conductor for the performance of concerted music; but what he actually delivers is a very-UNrevolutionary broadside against the personality cults that have developed around certain celebrity conductors. And THE LIFE AND DEATH OF CLASSICAL MUSIC supplies the much same unflattering, now-get-a-load-of-this gossip about classical music celebrities in general but about Herbert von Karajan in particular.

Lebrecht plays fast and loose with his facts. Speaking of Caruso as of 1902, he claims on p. 11: "Short, fat and ugly, Caruso was an unlikely star...." This judgment can be tested against 1902 photographs of Caruso in Francis Robinson, CARUSO, HIS LIFE IN PICTURES. After recounting how the sales of Caruso's G & T recordings from April, 1902, jump-started the commercial recording industry, Lebrecht states on page 12: "The last Golden Ager to hold out [on making records] was...Feodor Chaliapin." This is very mistaken: Chaliapin recorded cylinders as early as 1898 and recorded discs for Emil Berliner as early as 1901.

Lebrecht's facile dismissal of the acoustical recording era (roughly, the interval 1888 - 1925) is equally bone-headed. P. 10: "Sounds that were collected before these events [the manufacture of Artur Schnabel's recordings during the 1930s] are chiefly of archaeological interest. To listen through aural debris to Francesco Tamagno (1850 - 1905), Verdi's original Otello, or to Alessandro Moreschi (1858 - 1922), the last castrato, is a fascinating experience but one that cannot be endured for much longer than holding one's head down a wishing well. ...Mighty Melba comes forth enfeebled, Tetrazzini underpowered, Galli-Curci unbeautiful." There's no point arguing with Lebrecht about this verdict. Taste in musical performance is very personal, and there's no helping it if someone can't stand listening to acoustical recordings. Be that as it may, Lebrecht's opinion doesn't square with history at all. The commercial recording industry was a multi-million dollar, world-wide affair as early as 1910. Records made by celebrity vocalists during the acoustical era sold in the millions right up until 78 r.p.m. discs went out of production during the 1950s. None of this would be true if everyone was "holding one's head down a wishing well."

Lebrecht's THE LIFE AND DEATH OF CLASSICAL MUSIC could have offered a serious investigation, a la Joseph Horowitz, of classical music's decline in popularity since 1975. Despite the blurbling of various impresarios and celebrity performing artists that classical music is bigger today than ever before, the genre's current exposure is but a shadow of what it once was. The tale is told in market share rather than overall receipts. The performance of opera and symphonic music was prime-time fare on network television several nights a week during the 1950s; today, network television won't invest a dime to air performances of either. Likewise, during the 1950s classical music accounted for between 25% and 30% of all record sales; today, its percentage hovers around 2.5%. How many times have you been interrupted during the dinner hour by telephone solicitors for donations to a symphony orchestra or an opera company? Compare with the number of telephone solicitations you've received on behalf of rock bands. The brutal fact is that the popularity of rock music has rendered every other form of musical entertainment esoteric, with the minor exceptions of country western and gospel. Yes, it's fascinating to read that artiste So-and-so is a bank robber, a forger, a counterfeiter, a spy, a razor murderer, a bigamist, a serial rapist, a pederast, an animal sodomist, and (of course!) a Nazi. Still, classical music's misfortunes don't trace to the off-stage capers of its celebrity performers, any more than the film industry's tribulations owe to the off-camera antics of Hollywood stars. The real factors deserve serious exploration. Norman Lebrecht, though, clearly ain't the man for the job.

Rich in prurient content, a goodly chunk of Lebrecht's THE LIFE AND DEATH OF CLASSICAL MUSIC, like almost all of his MAESTRO MYTH, can be read as a classical-music-world counterpart of Suetonius' LIVES OF THE TWELVE CAESARS.

In principle, I'm all for the provocative and challenging opinion - provided that it has substance. If it is only provocative for the sake of provocation, if its only goal is to debunk idols just because they are idols (rather than FALSE idols), I find it as childish, vain and worthless as drawing moustaches on the Mona Lisa and calling it a great revolution in art.

And from a few clues I am afraid that Norman Lebrecht's book belongs to the second category. As I don't read the British press, I was only dimly aware of who the author was before chancing on this book, and have no bias for or against him - or rather, if anything, I'd have a bias in his favor, since I am in principle all for the provocative and challenging opinion.

Thanks to the browsing feature offered by this entry, I've first looked at his list of 20 Worst Recordings Ever Made, or (as the table of contents has it), Recordings that Should Never Have Been Made. So, he includes the famous version of Beethoven's Triple Concerto by the Soviet dream team of Oistrakh, Rostropovich and Richter with Karajan, that has been universally praised (until Lebrecht, that is) since its first publication in 1969 (my review is under Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 4; Triple Concerto). Now, to include it in his list is indeed quite a provocative gesture from Lebrecht. After all, it isn't a list of "The 20 Most Overrated Recordings", but of the 20 "Worst" - worse still: those that should never have been made: that bad. So, we've got the tantalizing title, one shivers in trepidation for the demonstration.

But Lebrecht's demonstration seems based on gossiping rather than listening. Oistrakh and Richter supposedly "found Karajan's tempi portentous and felt the music was being travestied by the ultra-plush underpinnings of the supersleek Berlin Philharmonic". Rostropovich supposedly decided "to side with the man in power - 'falling over himself,' grumbled Richter, 'to do everything Karajan wanted'". "Lacking conviction in each other, none of the soloists gave a hint of personal expression to his work. Oistrakh is unnaturally hoarse, Richter absent-minded and Rostropovich routine." Oistrakh and Richter, supposedly "ashamed of their performance, asked Karajan for one last take. 'No time,' said Karajan, 'we have to pose for the cover photographs.'".

This is pitiful music criticism, the kind you'd expect to be confined to idle time at the beauty salon. Oistrakh's hoarse tone is any other fiddler's silk, Rostropovich's routine is any other cellist's golden hour, and Richter's absent-mindedness means that the guy's fingers could do great music just running on automatic pilot. As for Karajan's "portentous tempi", the approach is not radically different from Oistrakh's previous recording, from ten years earlier, with the Philharmonia conducted by Malcolm Sargent (his partners then were his usual trio mates Lev Oborin and Stanislav Knushevitsky, Triple Violin Concerto), even similar within seconds in the finale. And as beautiful as the middle Largo was in 1959, it is even more beautiful in 1969, precisely because of the more held-back tempo and the soloist's ability to sustain it.

And then, how does Lebrecht account for the universal praise that was showered on the recording? Wouldn't you know: "Dazzled by the hype and for want of a superior recording, the reviews were raves and the sales hit half a million". So when I, and you, and half a million others, music critics and music lovers alike, hear a great recording, it is because we are all dazzled by the hype. Because, of course, half a million of us have no ears of our own (only Lebrecht does), just papillae that are sent salivating by the deceptive ring of a star-studded bill. But if that is the secret trick for success, why doesn't it work every time? Why was the so-called "concert of the century" with Horowitz, Stern and Rostropovich playing Tchaikovsky's trio and Horowitz partnering Fischer-Dieskau in Schumann's Dichterliebe, Concert of the Century: Celebrating the 85th Anniversary of Carnegie Hall, received with more than a lukewarm welcome (now this one might have been on Lebrecht's list)?

And then, what does Lebrecht mean exactly by "for want of a superior recording"? So what was advertised as one of the 20 worst ever is now the best of all those that had been recorded until then? Which obviously, to Lebrecht, were worse than the worst, but still include Weingartner, Walter with Corigliano-Rose-Hendl, Oistrakh-Knushevitsky-Oborin-Sargent, Schneiderhan-Fournier-Anda-Fricsay, Serkin-Laredo-Parnas-Schneider and Stern-Rose-Istomin-Ormandy. It is not even clear that Lebrecht is simply aware of those earlier recordings, let alone that he has listened to them. And it is not clear either that Lebrecht is aware of any of those that were recorded AFTER Karajan, judging from his statement that "it took years for a conscientious record label to come up with a credible alternative, pairing the well-attuned Beaux Arts Trio with the Leipzig Gewandhaus orchestra under Kurt Masur": from which one must conclude that either Lebrecht is unaware of, or doesn't consider as "credible alternatives" the versions of the Suk trio (with Masur), Zacharias Schiff Hoelscher (with... Masur!), the Beaux Arts Trio (with Haitink), Szeryng-Starker-Arrau-Inbal - and why even mention Karajan's remake with Mutter, Ma and Zeltser? Lebrecht's shooting down of Karajan's recording seems motivated by his general hatred of the Austrian conductor rather than by any fair and informed listening to the recording at hand, and I resent it.

Shall I go on? Sure! Kremer's recording of Beethoven's Violin Concero with Marriner and the famous (or infamous) Schnittke cadenza, the one that mixed styles in collage-manner and introduced contemporary music in the middle of Beethoven's Concerto. So, another of these 20 "worst" or (not exactly the same thing) "recordings that should never have been made".

I won't even hold it against Lebrecht that he has his facts wrong here, especially when he claims that only the Kreisler cadenza was played and that Kremer was the first who "broke the mould". That is, of course, ignoring Joachim (Szigeti played it in his two recordings with Walter), even Busoni (Szigeti played it in his 1960 recording with Dorati) and even... Beethoven: Wolfgang Schneiderhan made and recorded (and a few fiddlers picked it up after him) a very fine adaptation for violin of the cadenzas written by the composer himself for the re-scoring of his violin concerto in the form of a piano concerto - integral with the use of the accompanying timpani which was so ridiculed in Schnittke's own cadenza: Beethoven, Mozart: Violin Concertos / Schneiderhan, Jochum. But let's admit for an instant that Lebrecht is voluntarily over-simplifying his facts to make the presentation more hip for a wider audience (although "integrity" is the name given to NOT over-simplifying your material just to pander to an audience's supposed lack of culture).

But when you read what Lebrecht has to say about Schnittke's cadenza, his own personal opinion is not so clear. In fact, he seems to enjoy it, commenting that it "wittily demonstrat[es] a unity of purpose down the classical centuries, a brotherhood of great composers". Very perceptive. So why include it in the list of infamy? Once again, on the basis of gossiping and reporting what others are supposed to have said: Perlman (supposedly) didn't like it (no wonder, judging from his VERY traditional view of the concerto, Violin Concerto), Menuhin didn't like it, Stern didn't like it, Kremer dropped it from his repertoire (only to record an even more provocative cadenza, based on Beethoven's, with Harnoncourt! Ludwig van Beethoven: Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61 / Romance in G major, Op. 40 / Romance in F major, Op. 50 - Gidon Kremer / Chamber Orchestra of Europe / Nikolaus Harnoncourt) so this recording should never have been made, right? And that Marriner and yours truly loved it, naturally doesn't count. Then Lebrecht goes on to say that the execs at Philips didn't like it, didn't believe in it and flunked its release, so "what should have been a challenging addition to the classical repertoire turned into one of the worst record releases in memory, a classic case of corporate cold feet". Now wait! These circumstances don't qualify it as "the worst" or "one that should never have been made"! Why didn't Lebrecht draw a list of "The 20 Recordings Whose Success Was Jinxed By Corporate Cold Feet"? I would have taken no exception. Kremer's recording with Marriner remains still today, thirty years later, a great one, and what makes it stand out from hundreds of great versions is, precisely, Schnittke's entertaining and provoking cadenza (but NOT as provoking as Beethoven's!). But sometimes novelties will come against such thick and hardened walls of listening habits and hollow certainties that it will take years for them to drill through. A few years after this recording, architect Ieoh Ming Pei took the fancy of building a glass and metal pyramid in the middle of time-hallowed Louvre in the centre of Paris. It stirred infinitely more controversy back then then Schnittke's cadenza (wouldn't you dream of a world in which Schnittke's cadenza stirred more controversy than Pei's pyramid) - and cost much more money too. Now, it is one of Paris' main tourist attractions, and I am not aware that anybody questions it anymore.

And I could go on like this. Rattle's Jazz Album? I haven't finished listening to it and haven't yet written a review, but Rattle's version of Stravinsky's Ebony Concerto is the ONLY one that can compete with Stravinsky's own recording with Benny Goodman: it has swing and snap and instrumental pungency. And why zero in on poor Klemperer's Merry Waltz? First, the heading here is deceptive: obviously, Lebrecht doesn't consider that Klemp's recordings of Hindemith Nobilissima Visione and Weill's Dreigroschenmusik are among the 20 worst or not deserving of having ever been made, and really he doesn't seem to have any comments on their interpretation. It is only the 7-minute Merry Waltz that he takes exception with. Whatever Lebrecht thinks of it, it didn't prevent others from recording it - and that includes no less than Stokowski, so obviously they, with easily more credentials than Lebrecht, were of another opinion about the composition's value. And if Lebrecht was going to lash out against Klemperer the composer, why not go against the Symphony and String Quartet, infinitely more substantial works that are paired with Klemperer's infamous Mahler 7th: Mahler: Symphony No. 7 / Klemperer: Symphony No. 2, String Quartet No. 7? But whatever one's opinion of these compositions, anyone interested in Klemperer the conductor will want to give them a try (just as with the symphonies of Frutwängler or the compositions of Arthur Schnabel); so by no means can they be considered "recordings that should never have been made". On the contrary, they are recordings that deserved to be made, if only to enable the listener to make his own opinion, rather than blindly (or rather, deafly) following Lebrecht's deeply objectionable and ill-founded ones. And as long as Klemperer was going to be the target, it is really that Mahler 7th that should have been the candidate for the «worst» and «never should have been made» list: as much as I admire old Klemperer's deliberate and massive way, this one simply collapses under its own weight.

And did Lebrecht have so little to choose from for his list, that he had to put such inconsequential releases as Mahler for Dummies (not an original recording, in fact, but a compilation of excerpts from existing recordings). So you mean, among the millions of recordings of classical music since the advent of the LP, and the tens of thousands released by the "BIG" labels, he could come up with no better (e.g. "worse") than this to pour into his allotted twenty bottle? Of course that compilation (and the thousands of similar ones that encumber the supermarket shelves) is grotesque. But who cares about it? Nobody that is likely to read Lebrecht's book or to browse these Amazon pages. And if a label is going to make a few dimes by selling this kind of valueless "Listener's Digest" to classical music ignoramuses, why forbid it to them? Releases of this kind are so inconsequential that I don't understand why Lebrecht should even bother with them. Doesn't he have anything more interesting to say? Apparently not.

The browsing feature gives me access only to bits of Lebrecht's "100 best", but I've found a list of them on the net. I'm not sure it is entirely accurate, but if it is in listing "28. Tchaikovsky: Symphonies 4-6 (1956) LPO/Evgeny Mravinsky", well, there again, Lebrecht needs to get his facts straight. I don't even need to check my own discographies to know that in the 1956 mono set, it is Kurt Sanderling who conducts the 4th. Lebrecht is obviously confusing with DG's more famous stereo remake of the three last symphonies.


I am aware that Lebrecht's book is about more than just these lists. But they are so inaccurate, the "arguments" behind them so hollow, that it casts doubt on the accuracy and substance of all the rest. Lebrecht seems to have spent so much time collecting and reporting the gossip that there seems to have been very little time left to him to simply LISTEN to the recordings. I can't take this kind of criticism seriously, and it gives me no incentive to shell out 10 bucks plus postage just to find out if I'm wrong on the rest - or more likely, and worse, see that I am right.

Lebrecht is known in England for his columns in the London Evening Standard, and the Canadian magazine La Scena Musicale. He has also written eleven books about music, and is a presenter on BBC Radio 3.

The Life and Death of Classical Music is REALLY about the classical recording industry, in this past century--from its beginnings with Thomas Edison, Fred Gaisberg, and Emil Berliner. Lebrecht takes us though technological advances, from 78 rpm to 33 1/3; to tapes, to digital recording, all the way to compact discs. He covers the initial big record companies, Duetsche Grammophon, Decca, EMI, CBS, RCA, and Philips, and follows them down through the years, though mismanagement, mergers, takeovers, bankruptcies, and mutations.

Music recording brought western classical music to the far corners of the world, and brought the musical traditions of far-flung outposts back to the west. Recordings were used in classical performances, and influenced composers, like Bela Bartok's string quartets, re-worked from folklore he had recorded roaming Balkan villages.

Lebrecht writes about periods when the recording industry was turned on its head by massive sellers like the Beatles, and of course, Elvis Presley, who by the end of 1956 Elvis had sold $22 million worth of discs and merchandise in the U.S., half as much as the whole classical market. He writes about attempts to meld classical to popular with peculiar crossover pairings; and covers the early music revival with anecdotes and intriguing details.

The larger than life maestros: Toscanini, von Karajan, Leonard Bernstein, Riccardo Muti and their record company executives--Goddard Lieberson, Gunther Breest, Sony's Yetnikoff and Ohga, and Peter Gelb--all are mentioned. The connection to Broadway and film is covered as well.

The last section, with the 100 best classical recordings and 20 worst, is fun to read, instructive and witty.

While classical recording as we knew it seems to be dying off--the future may be heading in a totally different direction, with Internet downloads, XM satellite radio, and other unimaginable technological advances.

Armchair Interviews says: Interesting look at music through the ages.

Anyone remotely interested in the performance, production, and marketing of classical music should read this book. It is a fascinating but ultimately sad story about beauty, greed gone amok, genius, ambition, culture, and arrogance. Unlike other reviewers, I am not as impressed with Lebrecht's style of writing. It is awkward at times, and the book could have used the intervention of a skilled editor, but all-in-all, a must read for those of us who spend more hours in the concert hall and in front of our CD/DVD players than we like to admit!

Norman Lebrecht, author of The Maestro Myth: Great Conductors in Pursuit of Power, returns with another inside look at the classical music business. Where Lebrecht previously explored the history of legendary conductors and their battles to gain podium, power, and public worship, now he traces the rise and fall, or as it he calls it, Life and Death of Classical Music.

There certainly is plenty of Life and Death on hand, with names by the hundreds, and an index 17 pages long. Unlike Alex Ross (The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century), Lebrecht doesn't analyze the music with score in hand - his story is about people, events, and recordings that moved the industry, for better or worse. Lebrecht assembles the actors on his stage like an inventory - even Thomas Pynchon and Arctic Monkeys show up somewhere - to create a text with gossip-heavy overtones, sculpted into blunt, compact form, spiced with choice concise quotations and passionate rhetorical crescendos.

Among those names that get more than a casual drop - musicians, engineers and executives - we find a cast worthy of any Cold War novel - divided loyalties, dubious motives, disputed contracts, broken friendships, ruined fortunes. Of course, unreformed Nazis come under Lebrecht's exposure, and Lebrecht often follows his subjects down to the last dying breath, delivering on the back end of his title with chilling effect. But while Lebrecht conveys a sense of intrique from page to page, as if Who worked for Who was not always clear from day to day, the pulse of his narrative often relies on manipulating chronology and causality, occasionally to the point of historical distortion.

Among conductors who sold many records, Toscanini and Solti seem to earn Lebrecht's highest regard, while von Karajan is shown to be, not surprisingly, both Salvation and Ruin to music at large. Bernstein gets roughed up pretty badly, while Haitink is just barely on the radar. Also remote are many early-music mavericks, though Harnoncourt gets some attention, and David Munrow also receives a respectful ovation. Generally Lebrecht's focus on particular conductors remains where it was in The Maestro Myth.

Finally, there are Lebrecht's lists - The 100 Milestones of The Recorded Century (in chronological order) and 20 That Should Never Have Been Made. From the former, many earlier items are true standouts, but as time passes and the industry grows, the list begins to represent the growing diversity of pleasures made available - recordings from Telefunken, Supraphon, and Naxos, for example - and many readers will have their own favorites.

Lebrecht's logic often favors financial as well as artistic success, yet somehow he celebrates a certain Complete Beethoven Symphony set that few will have on their shelves. When he can't hide his bias, his purpose can seem malevolent. His petty injustice to Gidon Kremer and Alfred Schnittke, with Beethoven and, less directly, Arvo Part as accomplices, resorts to historical omission and contradiction. But all is not elitist or cynical, as Lebrecht also reveals a warm-hearted appreciation for composers and musicians who lived to create music as artists rather than celebrities.

Overall, a grand story told with an interesting viewpoint and taut, engaging exposition that rarely fails to keep the reader alert and entertained.

I LOVED this book! Norman Lebrecht is a terrific writer. He is erudite, accessible, and lively. Perhaps best of all, his enthusiasm is contagious. This book caused me to take action, which only a handful of the thousands of books I've read in my life have caused me to do. His passionate descriptions of the best recordings inspired me to purchase several of them -- and they're just as good as he says they are! (In particular, Jacqueline du Pre's recording of the Elgar Cello Concerto is one of the most remarkable recordings I've ever heard -- and I would never have known about it without this book.)

Having said that, I agree with another reviewer who notes that Lebrecht doesn't seem to have much of a feel for popular music, and this seems to result in some overly harsh judgements in certain instances.