Norman Lebrecht (born 11 July 1948) is a British music journalist and author who specializes in classical music.[1] He is best known as the owner of the classical music blogSlipped Disc, in which he frequently publishes articles.[2] Unlike other writers on music, Lebrecht rarely reviews concerts or recordings, preferring to report on the people and organizations who engage in classical music.[1] Described by Gilbert Kaplan as "surely the most controversial and arguably the most influential journalist covering classical music",[1] his writings have been praised as entertaining and revealing, while others have accused them of sensationalism and criticized their inaccuracies.
He was a columnist for The Daily Telegraph from 1994 to 2002, and assistant editor of the London Evening Standard from 2002 to 2009. On BBC Radio 3, Lebrecht presented lebrecht.live beginning in 2000, and The Lebrecht Interview from 2006 to 2016. He has written columns for the magazines Standpoint and The Critic.
In additions to writings on the classical music industry, Lebrecht has written 12 books on music[3] and two novels The Song of Names (2001) and The Game of Opposites: A Novel (2009). The former won a 2002 Whitbread Award and was adapted into a film of the same name directed by François Girard. A work of social history, Genius and Anxiety: How Jews Changed the World, 1847–1947, was published in 2019.
In 1977 Lebrecht married the sculptor and writer Elbie Spivack; they have three daughters.[4]
Journalism
Following his graduation, from 1970 to 1972 Lebrecht worked at the Kol Yisrael news department, part of the Israel Broadcasting Authority.[6] He returned to London in 1972,[6] where he was a news executive at Visnews Ltd from 1973 to 1978.[4]
Beginning in 1982, he was a special contributor to The Sunday Times until 1991.[5]
In 1993 he became a music columnist for The Daily Telegraph in Britain, holding the post until 2002.
In 2002 he was an arts columnist and assistant editor of the Evening Standard, writing a weekly column until 2015.[7]Gilbert Kaplan wrote that "From his perch in London he has covered and uncovered the classical music world in his full-page weekly column in the Evening Standard which through the internet is must-reading around the world ... concentrating on reporting on the organizations and the people managing – or as he often sees it, mismanaging – the classical music world as well as the stars who dominate this culture. All this with a sensibility normally associated with a political reporter or even a police reporter. He was the first to predict the demise of the major classical record companies – now documented in his recently released book The Life and Death of Classical Music."[1]
Lebrecht wrote a monthly column for the culture magazine Standpoint, which ceased publication in 2021.[3] Some months before its demise, Lebrecht transferred his monthly essay to a new magazine, The Critic.
Books
The 1980s saw the publication of various books on music by Lebrecht: Discord: Conflict and the Making of Music (1982),[8]The Book of Musical Anecdotes (1985),[9]Mahler Remembered (1987),[10] and A Musical Book of Days (1987).[11] Following his leave from The Sunday Times, Lebrecht released The Maestro Myth: Great Conductors in Pursuit of Power (1991),[12] which charts the history of conducting, from its rise as an independent profession in the 1870s to its subsequent and purposed preoccupations with power, wealth, and celebrity. The following year he released two books: Music in London (1992),[13] as well as The Companion to 20th-Century Music (1992).[14]
In 1996 he published When the Music Stops: Managers, Maestros and the Corporate Murder of Classical Music,[15] a history of the classical music business, presenting an exposé of its backstage workings and predicting the collapse of the record industry. Herman Trotter of The Buffalo News wrote that Lebrecht's "widely discussed 1992 book "The Maestro Myth" seems to have been a warm-up for his current magnum opus."[16] He also published Covent Garden: The Untold Story: Dispatches from the English Culture War, 1945–2000 (2000),[17] covering the history of the Royal Opera House.
His career as a novelist began in 2002 with The Song of Names (2002),[18] a tale of two boys growing up in wartime London and the impact of the Holocaust.[19] It was published in 2001, and went on to win the 2002 Whitbread Award for First Novel. Lebrecht won the award at the age of 54.[20] A feature film based on the 2002 novel, The Song of Names, was released in 2019. Directed by François Girard, it stars Tim Roth and Clive Owen.[21]
His second book on Mahler, Why Mahler?: How One Man and Ten Symphonies Changed Our World was published in 2010.[22] In 2014, Lebrecht received the Cremona Music Award from Mondomusica and Cremona Pianoforte in the Communication category, citing that book, and his other books and articles, and recognizing his "commitment ... to the diffusion of the music culture at a global level."[3]
Another novel, The Game of Opposites: A Novel (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group), was published in 2009 in the US.
Lebrecht published a work of social history titled Genius and Anxiety: How Jews Changed the World, 1847–1947 by Oneworld (UK) in October 2019 and by Simon & Schuster (USA) in December 2019. David Crane in The Spectator called it "Norman Lebrecht's urgent and moving history."[23] Rebecca Abrams in the Financial Times described the book as "[i]mpressively wide-ranging in scope and unflaggingly fascinating in detail".[24] Tanjil Rashid wrote in The Times: "Claims to have 'changed the world' tend to be exaggerations, but Lebrecht's subtitle, How Jews Changed the World 1847–1947, seems understated. The world wasn't changed, it was remade."[25]Mark Glanville wrote in The Times Literary Supplement: "Lebrecht's book is an extended meditation on the question of what it is about Jews that has enabled them to change the world in so many different ways. He guides us through his chosen period (1847–1947) in a breathless present continuous, with an enthusiasm that holds the reader's attention. Besides major, familiar figures, such as Einstein, Freud, Marx, Proust and Schoenberg, his kaleidoscope of characters includes Rosalind Franklin, whose important work on the double helix has still not been fully recognized; Leo Szilard, who split the atom; and Albert Ballin, to whom Lebrecht attributes the invention of the hamburger."[26]
Lebrecht's next book, in 2023, was Why Beethoven: A Phenomenon in 100 Pieces. The distinguished Beethoven biographer Jan Swafford called it 'a connoisseur's guide to Beethoven recordings'. BBC Music magazine designated it 'one heck of an enjoyable read.' The author Gina Dalfonzo wrote on Substack: 'At all times, though, his descriptions are unforgettable. I was startled, amused, sometimes delighted by such critiques as “Paul Badura-Skoda, recording on a Beethoven-era Erard, clunks about like bad plumbing”; or “The space between each note is separated like chess pieces on a world championship board”; or “A 1990 Brussels recording by the Russian exile Mischa Maisky with the Argentine wanderer Martha Argerich sounds like a morning-after hotel breakfast, desultory but deeply affectionate.” One moment he’s vulgar, the next moment he’s classy, but always, unfailingly, he’s interesting.'
Defamation case
His 2007 book Maestros, Masterpieces and Madness: The Secret Life and Shameful Death of the Classical Record Industry (US title: The Life and Death of Classical Music) was billed as an inside account of the rise and fall of recording, combined with a critical selection and analysis of 100 albums and 20 recording disasters. The book, however, was withdrawn from the market after its publisher discovered that it contained numerous libelous claims.[27] In 2007 the founder of Naxos Records, Klaus Heymann, sued Lebrecht's publisher, Penguin Books, for defamation in London's High Court of Justice.[28] Heymann claimed that Lebrecht had wrongly accused him of "serious business malpractices" in his book Maestros, Masterpieces and Madness, and identified at least 15 statements he claimed were inaccurate.[29] The case was settled out of court. As a result of the settlement, Penguin issued a statement acknowledging the baselessness of Lebrecht's accusations and apologising for "the hurt and damage which [Heymann] has suffered". The publisher also agreed to pay an undisclosed sum in legal fees to Heymann, to make a donation to charity, to refrain from repeating the disputed allegations and to seek the return of all unsold copies of Lebrecht's book.[29] Commenting on the affair, Heymann said: "For me it's beyond belief how any journalist in five pages can make so many factual mistakes. It's shocking. Also, he [Lebrecht] really doesn't understand the record business.[29]" The settlement did not extend to the US edition of Lebrecht's book.[28]
Broadcasting
Beginning in 2000, he presented lebrecht.live (a cultural debate forum where "issues in the arts are debated and hotly disputed by makers and consumers of culture") on BBC Radio 3, whose output centres on classical music and opera.[30]
From 2006 until 2016 he hosted The Lebrecht Interview ("Classical music critic Norman Lebrecht talks to major figures in the field"), also on BBC Radio 3.[31]
Slipped Disc
Lebrecht launched a classical music blog, Slipped Disc, in March 2007, originally as part of ArtsJournal.com. It attracts over one million readers per month.[3] In 2014, his blog became a standalone commercial website, supported by advertising and promotions. The blog primarily focuses on classical music industry gossip.
When asked by one interviewer whether he found such gossip interesting personally or whether he covered it for the sake of viewership, Lebrecht confirmed that the gossip
is the human comedy, that's what I like. I came into music because nobody was writing about it in a way that interested me. . . . What is important to someone who's just got out of bed, had a shower, got dressed, and is having their morning coffee? It's not Sibelius Four. It might be, "What happened to this conductor last night?"[2]
Critical reception
Lebrecht's polemical writings have drawn strong and diverse responses; Gilbert Kaplan described him in 2007 as "surely the most controversial and arguably the most influential journalist covering classical music."[1]Robert Craft praised The Maestro Myth as an "exposé of the business practices of orchestral conducting [that] is likely to be the most widely read classical music book of the year".[32] The American composer Gunther Schuller, in his 1998 book The Compleat Conductor, described The Maestro Myth in these terms: "A remarkably knowledgeable and courageous, no-holds-barred exposé of the serious degradation and venality in the conducting business, the wheeling and dealing of the power-broking managements that control most of the music business."[33] Schuller went on to say: "It is sobering reading, to say the least, and is highly recommended to anyone concerned about the integrity of the art and profession of music." On the other hand, music critic Michael White described the book as merely "a compendium of gossip about who earns what and slept with whom to get it".[34] Lebrecht himself was described by musicologistRichard Taruskin as "a sloppy but entertaining British muckraker".[35] Several journalists have noted multiple misstatements of fact by Lebrecht:
John von Rhein, Chicago Tribune:
Lebrecht writes entertainingly and has a wicked ear for backstage gossip. When he is on – as in his portraits of Karajan and Ronald Wilford, the Machiavellian power broker of Columbia Artists Management – his lance can be deadly. And his contention that our desperate need for cultural icons has made us pump up even limited talents into mythical figures gives sobering pause.
But he fails to tell the whole story and cannot back up his odd melange of history, gossip, fact and bitchy iconoclasm with anything that might give his book lasting value. Nearly every page contains some careless blunder or spelling mistake. Too much of The Maestro Myth in fact betrays the sensibility of a tabloid columnist who cannot distinguish between tattle and truth – and worse, doesn't seem to care.
A generally skeptical sketch of Daniel Barenboim and his career ends with the unlikely image of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conductor standing alone "between the shoreline and the stinking slaughterhouses" – razed more than 30 years ago.[36]
Roger Dettmer, The Baltimore Sun:
The book [The Maestro Myth] is a syntactic miasma of received gossip, recycled anecdotes, rickety extrapolations and cultural penis-envy, with a gaffe-account in the hundreds. The sheer size and weight of careless mistakes, carelessly written, make the reader wary about anything in the book that hasn't been experienced firsthand.
Factually, for example, we find Cincinnati "the state capital" of Ohio. Philadelphia is a "dreary industrial city" whose orchestra was "founded" by Stokowski on Page 3, but (correctly) by Fritz Scheel on Page 133. In the same breath, though, Scheel is misidentified as the founder of the San Francisco Symphony.
In Chicago (where Claudio Abbado was not "Solti's candidate" to succeed him), Daniel Barenboim (who was) "stands alone between the shoreline and the stinking slaughterhouses," razed more than 30 years ago. The author doesn't bring Toscanini or Sir Thomas Beecham to the New York Philharmonic until 1930 (try 1926 and '28, respectively), and wrongly assigns Tom Wolfe's "Radical Chic" sendup of Leonard Bernstein to the New York Times (it was New York magazine).
There are even mistakes about Mahler, even though Mr. Lebrecht's last book was Mahler Remembered, an anthology. About his native heath, he writes that "Georg Solti never wanted the job" of music director of London's Covent Garden Opera. But Solti did want it; his dilemma in 1959 was whether to take the Deutsche Oper in Berlin plus the Hamburg Philharmonic, or Covent Garden plus the Los Angeles Phil.[37]
An anonymous informant identified as "one of the world's leading conductors" told The Independent that Lebrecht had for years been getting away with "pompous, preposterous judgment" and "inept research".[28] Upon being awarded the 2015 Cremona Music Award, pianist Grigory Sokolov refused to accept the honour, making this statement on his website: "According to my ideas about elementary decency, it is shame to be in the same award-winners list with Lebrecht".[39]
Selected bibliography
Lebrecht, Norman (1982). Discord: Conflict and The Making of Music. London: A. Deutsch.
—— (1985). The Book of Musical Anecdotes. New York: Free Press. Also published as Hush! Handel's in a Passion: tales of Bach, Handel, and their contemporaries
—— (1996). When The Music Stops: Managers, Maestros and the Corporate Murder of Classical Music. London: Simon & Schuster. Also published as Who Killed Classical Music?: Maestros, Managers, and Corporate Politics
—— (2000). Covent Garden: The Untold Story: Dispatches from the English Culture War, 1945–2000. London: Simon & Schuster.
—— (2002). The Song of Names: A Novel. London: Headline Review.
—— (2007). Maestros, Masterpieces and Madness: The Secret Life and Shameful Death of the Classical Record Industry. London: Allen Lane. Also published as The Life and Death of Classical Music: Featuring The 100 Best and 20 Worst Recordings Ever Made
—— (2010). Why Mahler?: How One Man and Ten Symphonies Changed Our World. London: Faber and Faber.
—— (2019). Genius and Anxiety: How Jews Changed the World, 1847–1947. London: Oneworld Publications.
Related Research Articles
Leonard Bernstein was an American conductor, composer, pianist, music educator, author, and humanitarian. Considered to be one of the most important conductors of his time, he was the first American-born conductor to receive international acclaim. Bernstein was "one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history" according to music critic Donal Henahan. Bernstein's honors and accolades include seven Emmy Awards, two Tony Awards, and 16 Grammy Awards as well as an Academy Award nomination. He received the Kennedy Center Honor in 1981.
Otto Nossan Klemperer was a German conductor and composer, originally based in Germany, and then the United States, Hungary and finally, Great Britain. He began his career as an opera conductor, but he was later better known as a conductor of symphonic music.
Sir Georg Solti was a Hungarian-British orchestral and operatic conductor, known for his appearances with opera companies in Munich, Frankfurt, and London, and as a long-serving music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Born in Budapest, he studied there with Béla Bartók, Leó Weiner, and Ernő Dohnányi. In the 1930s, he was a répétiteur at the Hungarian State Opera and worked at the Salzburg Festival for Arturo Toscanini. His career was interrupted by the rise of the Nazis' influence on Hungarian politics, and being Jewish, he fled the increasingly harsh Hungarian anti-Jewish laws in 1938. After conducting a season of Russian ballet in London at the Royal Opera House, he found refuge in Switzerland, where he remained during the Second World War. Prohibited from conducting there, he earned a living as a pianist.
Daniel MosesBarenboim is an Argentine-Israeli classical pianist and conductor based in Berlin, who also has Spanish and Palestinian citizenship. From 1992 until January 2023, Barenboim was the general music director of the Berlin State Opera and "Staatskapellmeister" of its orchestra, the Staatskapelle Berlin.
Claudio Abbado was an Italian conductor who was one of the leading conductors of his generation. He served as music director of the La Scala opera house in Milan, principal conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, principal guest conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, music director of the Vienna State Opera, founder and director of the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, founder and director of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, founding artistic director of the Orchestra Mozart and music director of the European Union Youth Orchestra.
Bernard Johan Herman Haitink was a Dutch conductor and violinist. He was the principal conductor of several international orchestras, beginning with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in 1961. He moved to London, as principal conductor of the London Philharmonic Orchestra from 1967 to 1979, music director at Glyndebourne Opera from 1978 to 1988 and of the Royal Opera House from 1987 to 2002, when he became principal conductor of the Staatskapelle Dresden. Finally, he was principal conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra from 2006 to 2010. The focus of his prolific recording was classical symphonies and orchestral works, but he also conducted operas. He conducted 90 concerts at The Proms in London, the last on 3 September 2019 with the Vienna Philharmonic. His awards include Grammy Awards and the 2015 Gramophone Award for his lifetime achievements.
Carlo Maria Giulini was an Italian conductor. From the age of five, when he began to play the violin, Giulini's musical education was expanded when he began to study at Italy's foremost conservatory, the Conservatorio Santa Cecilia in Rome at the age of 16. Initially, he studied the viola and conducting; then, following an audition, he won a place in the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.
Rafael Jeroným Kubelík, KBE was a Czech conductor and composer.
Maestro is an honorific title of respect, sometimes abbreviated Mo. The term is most commonly used in the context of Western classical music and opera, in line with the ubiquitous use of Italian musical terms. The feminine form of the word is maestra.
Grigory Lipmanovich Sokolov is a Russian pianist with Spanish citizenship. He is among the most esteemed of living pianists, his repertoire spanning composers from the Baroque period such as Bach, Couperin or Rameau up to Schoenberg and Arapov. He regularly tours Europe and resides in Italy.
Klaus Hermann Wilhelm Tennstedt was a German conductor from Merseburg. Known for his interpretation of the Austro-German repertoire, especially his sympathetic approaches towards Gustav Mahler, Tennstedt is widely considered one of the greatest and most influential conductors of the late 20th century. He worked with the Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra, the NDR Symphony Orchestra, and other highly regarded ensembles such as the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, and most notably the London Philharmonic Orchestra, with which he was closely associated and recorded many of his celebrated recordings under the EMI label, including a cycle of Mahler's 10 symphonies.
Jonathan Stewart Vickers,, known professionally as Jon Vickers, was a Canadian heldentenor.
Joan Carlyle was a Welsh operatic soprano singer. She was born in Upton on the Wirral, Cheshire. After auditioning for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, she was put under contract by the musical director Rafael Kubelík and made her debut in 1955, appearing also under him in The Magic Flute in 1956 and as Ascagne in Les Troyens.
Karl Pohlig was a German Bohemian conductor, cellist and pianist. A piano student of Hungarian composer Franz Liszt and assistant to Gustav Mahler at the Vienna Court Opera, he went on to become the first conductor to perform the complete version of Bruckner's Symphony No. 6. In 1907, he was appointed as conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Josef Alois Krips was an Austrian conductor and violinist.
Carlos Païta was an Argentine conductor. He was born in Buenos Aires.
Daniele Gatti is an Italian conductor. He is currently chief conductor of Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, artistic advisor of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, music director of the Orchestra Mozart and chief conductor of the Staatskapelle Dresden.
Rudolf Schwarz was an Austrian-born conductor of Jewish ancestry. He became a British citizen and spent the latter half of his life in England.
Frédéric Chaslin is a French conductor, composer and pianist.
Klaus Heymann is a German entrepreneur and the founder and head of the Naxos record label.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
