Hans Von Blow

C. Cai, CHOICE provides a fascinating study of a man who intersected with all the great musicians of his day...engaging, well-written book

John Amis, Musical Opinion what an enthralling book, finely researched!

Wall Street Journal Alan Walker's ground-breaking Hans von Blow: A Life and Times is the first objective biography of a major player who, for all his social ineptitude, shaped the musical world as we know it today.

Malcolm Miller, Arietta Journal Throughout the book, Walker delights the reader with rich insights and an encyclopaedic knowledge of the field, always infusing his elegant prose with a love of detail and irony, anecdotes and connections fuelled with wit and wisdom, all of which brings the subject alive. As a result his book promises to enrich scholars and music lovers alike, and to turn Beethovenians and Wagnerians into Von Bulowians: a must-read.

EPTA Piano Journal This magnificent long-overdue biography is the monument to Blow that never was... What Truman Capote did in In Cold Blood towards creating a new genre of fiction faction that is to say a documentary with all its existential drama built in, Walker has contrived to do by extension in biography or should we call it biografaction where by connecting up data in the form of letters, civic documents and newspaper reports, together with an uncanny interpretive gift for reading between the lines, he creates a vital context whereby his book, quite apart from its profundity, finishes by being as unputdownable as the latest historical novel by Mary Renault.

The Wagner Journal Walker's narrative unfolds with energy, and provides an impressively rounded portrait of his subject, full of flaws as well as strengths... Generously laced with witty, wise anecdotes, copious footnotes, elegant illustrations and a family tree, as well as a hefty index and source list, the book represents a seminal study of one of the movers and shakers of 19th-century music, a relatively unsung hero of musical history.

The Hungarian Quarterly Worth the wait... In English, Walker's book has no competition. Its sixty-three illustrations and programme reproductions add much to the reader's pleasure... A remarkable repository of information on Bulow.

David Breckbill, BBC Music Magazine a profitable read for anyone interested in the musicians and activities that von Bulow's life touched

Roger Allen, Music and Letters This study of Hans von Blow must stand as one of the most important and indeed necessary biographies of a musician published in recent times ... compelling

<br>ALAN WALKER is Professor Emeritus of Music at McMaster University, Canada. Before settling in North America he was on the staff of the Music Division of the British Broadcasting Corporation in London. He has broadcast for the BBC, for the CBC, and for CJRT - FM (Toronto), and gives regular public lectures on the music of the Romantic Era, a period in which he specializes. His thirteen published books include A Study in Musical Analysis, An Anatomy of Musical Criticism, and symposia on Chopin, Schumann, and Liszt. Dr. Walker is also author of a three-volume, prize winning biography of Franz Liszt, a project which took him twenty-five years to complete, and for which the President of Hungary bestowed on him the medal ProCulturaHungarica. The biography also received the Royal Philharmonic Society Prize, presented by HRH The Duke of Kent in London. He is the recipient of the Music Teachers National Association 2010 Achievement Award and the Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit from Hungary.<br>

PROLOGUE; 1. From Alpha to Omega; 2. Bulow's Family Background; BOOK ONE: ON THE SLOPES OF PARNASSUS, 1830-1869; 3. The Early Years; 4. With Liszt in Weimar; 5. The Growing Virtuoso; 6. Berlin, 1855-64 I: A City of Mingled Chimes; 7. Berlin, 1855-64 II: Marriage to Cosima; 8. Catastrophe in Munich, 1864-69; BOOK TWO: ASCENDING THE PEAK, 1870-1880; 9. Bulow in Florence; 10. First Tours of Britain - and beyond, 1873-1875; 11. First Tour of America, 1875-76; 12. A Scottish Interlude, 1877-78; 13. Bulow and the Glasgow Choral Union; 14. At Hanover, 1877-79; 15. Britannia Scorned: Encounters and Skirmishes in the Land without Music'; BOOK THREE: VISTAS FROM THE SUMMIT, 1880-1894; 16. The Meiningen Years, 1880-85; I. IThe Meiningen Miracle: The Meiningen Years, 1880-85; II. Enter Marie Schanzer: The Meiningen Years, 1880-85; III. Paths of Glory; 17. Bulow the Pedagogue; 18. The Frankfurt Masterclasses; 19. A New Home in Hamburg, 1886; 20. The Berlin Philharmonic, 1887-92; I. The Eagle's Wings; Return to America, 1889 and 1890; II. 'Glory, Honour, and Good Fortune'; The Last Days and Death of Bulow, 1893-94; APPENDIX I BULOW'S AUTOPSY REPORT; APPENDIX II CATALOGUE OF BULOW'S COMPOSITIONS; APPENDIX III BULOW'S TITLES AND HONOURS; LIST OF SOURCES