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  • muzzer
    Full Member
    • Nov 2013
    • 1190

    I think you might struggle to find one single tome for that......

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    • muzzer
      Full Member
      • Nov 2013
      • 1190

      Though I'd recommend The Austrian Mind by William Johnston and Fin de Siecle Vienna by Carl Schorske if you've not read them.

      Comment

      • Petrushka
        Full Member
        • Nov 2010
        • 12229

        Originally posted by muzzer View Post
        I think you might struggle to find one single tome for that......
        I know because I've looked. To a large extent the narrative can be pieced together from books such as Hitler in Vienna by Brigitte Hamann and biographies of young Stalin, Mahler and such like but it's a subject that's fascinated me for years and it deserves to be told.
        "The sound is the handwriting of the conductor" - Bernard Haitink

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        • Petrushka
          Full Member
          • Nov 2010
          • 12229

          Originally posted by muzzer View Post
          Though I'd recommend The Austrian Mind by William Johnston and Fin de Siecle Vienna by Carl Schorske if you've not read them.
          Thanks for the Schorske recommendation which looks promising and of which I've not heard. Duly ordered.
          "The sound is the handwriting of the conductor" - Bernard Haitink

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          • muzzer
            Full Member
            • Nov 2013
            • 1190

            Arthur Schnitzler's memoir My Youth in Vienna I also enjoyed.

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            • verismissimo
              Full Member
              • Nov 2010
              • 2957

              Also good for Vienna pre WW1:

              Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday
              Edward Crankshaw, The Fall of the House of Habsburg
              Eduard Hanslick, Vienna's Golden Years of Music 1850-1900
              Peter Vergo, Art in Vienna, 1898-1918
              Tim Bonyhady, Good Living Street: Portrait of a Patron Family, Vienna 1900
              George Clare, Last Waltz in Vienna

              The first and last most essential IMO.

              Comment

              • Richard Barrett
                Guest
                • Jan 2016
                • 6259

                Originally posted by Richard Barrett View Post
                I started into Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend, the first of her four-part "Neapolitan Series", and I've found it completely captivating. I'm a few pages from the end and feeling highly relieved that there are another three books to go. I'm not sure it's going to be enough.
                And it wasn't. I can't think of another work of imaginative literature from the present century that comes near the scope of this series.

                Comment

                • pastoralguy
                  Full Member
                  • Nov 2010
                  • 7731

                  I've been reading a boom called. 'Absolutely on music', a book of conversationS between the novelist Murakami and the conductor Seiji Ozawa. There are few nuggets but, IMHO, it's a lot of pretentious twaddle.

                  Comment

                  • Petrushka
                    Full Member
                    • Nov 2010
                    • 12229

                    Originally posted by verismissimo View Post
                    Also good for Vienna pre WW1:

                    Stefan Zweig, The World of Yesterday
                    Edward Crankshaw, The Fall of the House of Habsburg
                    Eduard Hanslick, Vienna's Golden Years of Music 1850-1900
                    Peter Vergo, Art in Vienna, 1898-1918
                    Tim Bonyhady, Good Living Street: Portrait of a Patron Family, Vienna 1900
                    George Clare, Last Waltz in Vienna

                    The first and last most essential IMO.
                    I've got the Zweig and Clare books, both, as you say, most essential. The Vergo and Bonyhady books are unknown to me and worth investigation.
                    "The sound is the handwriting of the conductor" - Bernard Haitink

                    Comment

                    • ferneyhoughgeliebte
                      Gone fishin'
                      • Sep 2011
                      • 30163

                      Originally posted by pastoralguy View Post
                      I've been reading a boom called. 'Absolutely on music', a book of conversationS between the novelist Murakami and the conductor Seiji Ozawa. There are few nuggets but, IMHO, it's a lot of pretentious twaddle.
                      If that's the Murakami of 1Q84 then that doesn't surprise me. Do they talk about the Janacek Sinfonietta at all?
                      [FONT=Comic Sans MS][I][B]Numquam Satis![/B][/I][/FONT]

                      Comment

                      • Richard Barrett
                        Guest
                        • Jan 2016
                        • 6259

                        Originally posted by pastoralguy View Post
                        I've been reading a boom called. 'Absolutely on music', a book of conversationS between the novelist Murakami and the conductor Seiji Ozawa. There are few nuggets but, IMHO, it's a lot of pretentious twaddle.
                        I wouldn't call it pretentious but I was quite disappointed by it, particularly the fact that Ozawa doesn't really have much to say and what he does have to say seems rather superficial.

                        Comment

                        • DracoM
                          Host
                          • Mar 2007
                          • 12955

                          Am reading Riders in the Chariot by Patrick White.

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                          • greenilex
                            Full Member
                            • Nov 2010
                            • 1626

                            I was delighted to find in my local library a new translation of a comic novel by Andrea Camilleri: The Brewer of Preston.

                            People who enjoy his Montalbano stories will also be amused by this one, I think, though it is more farcical. The title refers to an opera due to be performed in his Sicilian town.

                            Comment

                            • Globaltruth
                              Host
                              • Nov 2010
                              • 4282

                              An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine.

                              One of the best books I have read this decade.

                              A love letter to literature and its power to define who we are, the gifted Rabih Alameddine has given us a nuanced rendering of a single woman's reclusive life in the Middle East."
                              from the book jacket.

                              For once, I'm inclined to agree.

                              Here's a link to the books mentioned in the book:
                              64 books based on 5 votes: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa, Herzog by Saul Bellow, Midn...


                              If you have enjoyed any of those, then it is possible you may enjoy this book too.

                              Comment

                              • Stanley Stewart
                                Late Member
                                • Nov 2010
                                • 1071

                                Euphoric to receive my copy of Nicholas Hytner's, Balancing Acts: Behind the Scenes at the NT, this afternoon. He tells the inside story of twelve years at the helm and candidly covers its failures as well as many of its spectacular successes. Should be a good companion to the Peter Hall Diaries, 1983, and its turbulent years in the seventies, followed by Richard Eyre's, National Service, 2003; both a constant reference source for me. Pleasing to know that it has been selected as Book of the Week with extracts on R4, from Monday-Friday, next week.

                                Alan Bennett: 'Riveting..."Nothing makes me happier," Hytner writes, "than to throw a party and choose to sit on the edge of it." It was a party, often a triumphant one, but he was at the heart of it. As was someone else: Shakespeare, about whom he writes superbly. Speaking for myself, I've never had so much fun as working with Nicholas Hytner. This book explains why'





                                Retail price, £20, but I got a discounted offer of £17 + from the river people...Exit, pursued by a bear...
                                Last edited by Stanley Stewart; 27-04-17, 16:08. Reason: price correction; should read £13 60p

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