Quintet: Five Journeys toward Musical Fulfillment [Hardcover]

David Blum (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 4, 1999

Quintet presents compelling portraits of five artists known and loved by aficionados of classical music: the cellist Yo-Yo Ma, the conductor Jeffrey Tate, the violinist Josef Gingold, the pianist Richard Goode, and the opera singer Birgit Nilsson. This gracefully written book offers a deeply personal look at the lives of these immensely talented and hard-working performers. The essays grew out of conversations the musicians had with the late David Blum, who was himself distinguished both as a conductor and as an author of books and articles on musical subjects.Certain to delight music enthusiasts, Quintet is a perfect holiday gift.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Of all the arts, music must be the most elusive to capture in words. The writer trying to pin down how a particular work--no matter how familiar--casts its spell over listeners grapples to reach a seemingly quixotic goal. And, particularly when faced with the unique alchemy of personality and technique that goes into performance, too often the result is either distressingly abstract, absurdly reductive, or glib and empty-headed puffery that could easily be interchangeable from one star to the next. What a welcome contrast David Blum's Quintet: Five Journeys Toward Musical Fulfillment offers. Blum, who died in 1998, led a versatile career that bridged his extraordinary talents as conductor and writer. Along with founding the Esterhazy Orchestra in New York, Blum authored Casals and the Art of Interpretation, a classic study of the cellist, and The Art of Quartet Playing, as well as a number of exceptionally in-depth profiles for The New Yorker and The New York Times.

Quintet gathers five of these profiles (from the late '80s and early '90s): Yo-Yo Ma, Jeffrey Tate, Josef Gingold, Richard Goode, and Birgit Nilsson. Each portrait reveals Blum's uncanny ability to enter into the confidence of his subjects. He seems to blend the skills of a trusted therapist with the insight of an avid music lover in getting beyond their safeguards and letting them speak from an unusually intimate perspective. Blum conveys their unique world-views through arrestingly apt images, often coaxed directly from the musicians themselves. We find Yo-Yo Ma comparing Beethoven to a topnotch comic since both share "superb timing," while Richard Goode labels the piano "the great instrument of illusion." Blum also has a gift for elegant, lapidary formulations that go to the heart of the matter, as in his assessment of the encyclopedic knowledge of legendary violin pedagogue Josef Gingold: "Perhaps Gingold's most valuable service as a mentor is to heal the artistic division between technique and expression, between matter and spirit."

Blum's profiles go beyond in-depth interviews and actually reveal several levels, including a beautiful sense of proportion and structure in themselves. You can read them as compact little biographies that unfold with leisured ease, as essays in the relation of self-knowledge to artistic mastery, and as dazzling commentaries on particular pieces seen from within the musician's mind. Utterly lacking in pretension or pedantic analysis, Blum's style goes well beyond truisms and gives us new insights into such works as Bach's Cello Suites, Schubert's last piano sonatas, or Tristan und Isolde. There's plenty of humor here, along with painful acknowledgement from the musicians of the terrors of insecurity. The humanity that Blum reveals gives his portrayals a far-ranging appeal, in a style one could only hope arts journalists might look to as a model. --Thomas May

From Library Journal

The late conductor-turned-journalist Blum was one of the most articulate of all contemporary writers on music. These extended portraits of five musical luminaries--Yo Yo Ma, Jeffrey Tate, Josef Gingold, Richard Goode, and Birgit Nilsson--first appeared in The New Yorker and the New York Times and are all remarkable documents about remarkable people. The first chapter on Ma provides readers with a fascinating glimpse of the cellist. Among the most moving chapters are those on Tate, who overcame severe physical disabilities to become a world-class conductor, and Gingold, a Russian ?migr? who rose from poverty to become a revered concert master and teacher. Blum's pieces rely on conversations with his subjects and extensive interviews with their relatives, friends, and associates. His own personality is unobtrusive, yet his keen musical intelligence runs like a thread throughout. Recommended for public and college libraries.
-Larry A. Lipkis, Moravian Coll., Bethlehem, PA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Cornell University Press (November 4, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801437318
• ISBN-13: 978-0801437311
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,548,546 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, February 10, 2012

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This review is from: Quintet: Five Journeys toward Musical Fulfillment (Hardcover)

Superb book by David Blum. In depth and fascinating. From anecdotal to historical, the interviews are compelling and revealing. Highly recommended.