|
orman Lebrecht is a music critic, but his
history of the rise and fall of the classical music recording industry
reads more like a novel, sprinkled liberally with snippets of dialogue
and peppered with names of famous musicians and music industry executives.
Lebrecht ignores the technical, musical, and theoretical aspects of
classical music; for Lebrecht, it is the people, their personal successes
and failures, and juicy gossip about their peccadilloes that matter the
most. His insightful comment on page 89 that commercial success after the
artist's death is "the mark of a doomed civilization that worships its
dead," however, shows that he is not above making an occasional
philosophical comment when necessary.
The second half the book critiques what Lebrecht considers to be 100 most important and the 20 worst recordings. Since all but thirty of the former were released before 1980, fans are likely to have little success in finding them.
