Maestros, Masterpieces and Madness

Maestros, Masterpieces and Madness is an original, enjoyable and revealing account of how a random alliance of engineers, entrepreneurs, conductors and fixers invented a new medium containing the entire back catalogue of Western civilization: classical recording. The huge array of masterpieces they recorded, now safely digitalized, will last forever. They brought a form of music previously restricted to particular places and people of wealth to millions of fans around the world. But they also created a mountain of schlock, schmaltz, ego-trips and inconceivably misguided projects. And it all came to an end when the dawn of the internet and the onset of corporate insanity conspired substantially to shut down the industry; after all, with 140 different recordings of the Four Seasons to choose from, there is no need for another record. Norman Lebrecht compellingly demonstrates that classical recording has reached its end point, but this is not just an expose of decline and fall. It is, for the first time, the full story of a minor art form, celebrating the genius of Schnabel, Toscanini, Karajan, Callas, Rattle, and Pavarotti and many others. It is the story of how stars were made and sometimes broken by the record industry; how a war criminal conspired with his victims to create a record empire; and how advancing technology, international politics, public credulity and unscrupulous exploitation conspired to create the musical backdrop to our modern lives. For the dazzling legacy live on, even if the means of production have gone. The book ends with a suitable shrine to classical recording: the author's critical selection of the hundred most important recordings- and the twenty most appalling.