Norman Lebrecht – författare

Inflated egos. Corporate insanity. Slave labour. Sexual excess. Dazzling genius. Welcome to the world of classical recording. Maestros, Masterpieces and Madness is a sparkling exposé of the strange truth and sheer brilliance behind the classical music recording industry. Leading music critic Norman Lebrecht charts its rise since the great Caruso’s first gramophone bestseller of 1902 and predicts the industry’s imminent doom in the face of schmaltzy crossover albums and new technology. From the imperious Karajan to the perfectionist Toscanini and charismatic Bernstein, the leading figures are all here, depicted in witty, incisive pen portraits. Including Lebrecht’s own selections of 100 recorded masterpieces and twenty that should never have been made, this is a compelling story of flamboyant maestros, lifelong alliances, disastrous personality clashes and entrepreneurial masterstrokes.

Twentieth century music has been remarkable for its pluralism. The various styles,atonality, neo-classicism, nationalism, serialism, jazz, computer music, minimalism, electronics, folklorism, happenings," sheer chance,have been far from monolithic, and experimentation has been, perhaps, the century's only defining feature. With over 2500 entries, The Companion to 20th-Century Music is the first book to comprehensively define and applaud this diversity. Norman Lebrecht celebrates variety and innovation, assessing composers and musicians according to artistic merit rather than ideological or institutional eminence. He states that his purpose is to demythologize, to enlighten, and to entertain," so he writes in a readable, narrative style, free of jargon and abbreviations. The end result is the perfect companion to the music of our time.

A century after his death, Gustav Mahler is the most important composer of modern times. Displacing Beethoven as a box-office draw, heard in Hollywood films and on state occasions, his music inspires particular devotion. Some believe it helps heal emotional wounds, others find intellectual fascination in its contradictory meanings, and many feel that the music captures the yearnings and anxieties of our post-industrial society. In this highly original account of the composer's life and work, Norman Lebrecht explores the Mahler Effect, asking why Mahler's music has become the soundtrack to our twenty-first-century lives.

Gustav Mahler is the most influential symphonist of the twentieth century. In this pioneering study, Norman Lebrecht reveals the man and musician through the words of his contemporaries.Using many previously unpublished documents, he constructs a profile of Mahler even more complex and compelling than that familiar from his letters and the often unreliable memoirs of his widow, Alma. Compassionate or callous, idealistic or pragmatic, Mahler aroused violently contrasting impressions and emotions in those who lived and worked with him.Accounts of the composer include the artist Alfred Roller's description of Mahler's naked body, a Nazi-era reappraisal by one of his closest relatives, Natalie Bauer-Lechner's unpublished jottings of Mahler's childhood, and Stefan Zweig's report of his final voyage. Together, they form a remarkable and deeply illuminating image of a formidable personality.'The effect is cumulative, sometimes contradictory and vivid - like a written version of a radio or film portrait.' Classical Music'Norman Lebrecht's Mahler Remembered is quite breathtakingly interesting.' Birmingham Post

Without Beethoven, music as we know it wouldn’t exist. Who was this titan of world culture?'You want to build a Beethoven library? There can be no better starting point... Brilliant.' John Suchet, Classic FM presenterThrough 100 recordings, Lebrecht brings to life the composer as we’ve never seen him before. Unruly, offensive and hopeless in so much of his life, yes, but driven to a fault and devoted to his art, conquering deafness to compose some of the towering works of our culture.Along the way, we encounter the great musicians who have taken on the challenge of Beethoven, in all their glories and foibles. In this revealing, unique biography, Beethoven emerges as a cornerstone of the modern world.All recordings are freely available on Idagio and YouTube.

A unique chronicle of the hundred-year period when the Jewish people changed the world – and it changed them‘A riveting, gossipy, action-packed, seam-bursting blast through 100 years of (mainly) European history… Impressively wide-ranging in scope and unflaggingly fascinating.’ FINANCIAL TIMESMarx, Freud, Proust, Einstein, Bernhardt and Kafka. Between the middle of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries a few dozen men and women changed the way we see the world. But many have vanished from our collective memory despite their enduring importance in our daily lives. Without Karl Landsteiner, for instance, there would be no blood transfusions or major surgery. Without Paul Ehrlich no chemotherapy. Without Siegfried Marcus no motor car. Without Rosalind Franklin genetic science would look very different. Without Fritz Haber there would not be enough food to sustain life on earth.These visionaries all have something in common – their Jewish origins and a gift for thinking outside the box.In 1847 the Jewish people made up less than 0.25% of the world’s population, and yet they saw what others could not. How?