Norman Lebrecht

Quite entertaining collection of musical anecdotes, some of which might be true. Recommended by Robert Greenberg in the bibliography for the course, "The 30 Greatest Orchestral Works". My favorite, that I hadn't heard, is that when Rossini was asked, after seeing The Ring performed, what he thought of Wagner's music, he replied that he thought it would require many listenings to fully appreciate, and he would not be back.
[Note added later: I don't think Rossini could have seen The Ring performed in its entirety since it was completed years after his death. However, another similar frequently cited quote of Rossini's is,
"Wagner's music has wonderful moments and dreadful quarters of an hour."]… (more)

Lebrecht's overview of Mahler's life is educational, eye-opening, and for a Mahler-nerd, could probably be considered a must-read. This being said, the author's tendency to jump around in timelines and his propensity to name-drop makes it a difficult read at times. Truly the nerdiest and most challenging section to read is the end where he goes through an exhausting list of recordings, categorized by piece, and gives every single reason why each is good, bad, sub-standard, past-prime, wonderful, or just is. It's a whirlwind of names and run-on sentences that the nerd in me wanted to be able to experience but found truly exhausting. I was very happy, though, to be able to weed through the jungle of recordings to find many of the ones that I own and found that the author's love or hate matched my own feelings and for the same reasons. The redeemable takeaway from this Mahler-esqe section was seeing the different, but consistent, approaches certain conductors take when taking up Mahler (e.g., Walter, Klemperer, and Bernstein) which will most definitely impact my purchasing decisions in the future.… (more)