Customer Reviews

Priest of Music: The Life of Dimitri Mitropoulos

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I stumbled on the name Dimitri Mitropoulos quite by accident, as one never hears him mentioned much in the same way Karajan, Bernstein, and others are. Neither have I heard any of his recordings. This book helped me delve into this great man's life - what a singular purpose of mind he had - total dedication to his craft. William Trotter succeeds in giving us not just the details of his life (which, by themselves, are not exactly mundane), but also in bringing the reader the imagery, the depth of feeling of Mitropoulos' work. One can feel and see him conducting in his full glory. Having had this marvellous biography brought to me, I am now eagerly buying whatever recordings conducted by Mitropoulos that I can find. I agree with the other reader who commented - a discography would be most welcome.

At the time of Dimitri Mitropoulos' death in 1960, he was regarded as one of the greatest conductors of the century. His spellbinding performances in Minneapolis and with the New York Philharmonic were legendary. Then he handed (or was forced to hand over) the baton to Leonard Bernstein, Mitropoulos turned to opera. Virtually all of those performances are legendary. Even when let down by poor casts (such as a Met broadcast of DIE WALKURE) his conducting leaves the listener breathless. Yet the irony is that with a decade of his death, he was virtually forgotten. William Trotter's well-written, well-paced biography reminds us of Mitropoulos' great musicianship and encouraged me, for one, to pull the maestro's recordings off the shelf and become reacquainted. My only quibble is the lack of a discography. Maybe Amadeus will remedy that in future editions or maybe they'll give us a separate volume (as with their excellent Bjoerling discography). Highly recommended to all music lovers.

Mitropoulos's career, method of working, extraordinarymusicianship are described in detail. Also described is his sweetnessand naiveté. Aside from some special pleading when he bashes other conductors in defense of Mitropoulos, Trotter does a fine job of pulling together the research of Oliver Daniel who died before he could write the biography.