What are you reading now?

[CallMePaul]

Just started on Chopin's Piano by Paul Kildea, which was a Christmas present from a friend. It seems interesting and covers Chopin's stay in Mallorca with Georges Sand, as well as the Mallorcan piano that gives the book its title, and its history after Chopin's death.

[JasonPalmer]

Sounds interesting, I read a book about Chopin years ago but don't remember the title. A very interesting chap.

[Rjw]

Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris.

I promise that I will never read another book by Robert Harris, this was awful nonsense!

[Petrushka]

Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris.

I promise that I will never read another book by Robert Harris, this was awful nonsense!

I stopped reading Harris long ago. Nothing, though, could be as dreadful as William Boyd's 'Waiting for Sunrise' which has the distinction of being the worst book I've ever read.

[richardfinegold]

I stopped reading Harris long ago. Nothing, though, could be as dreadful as William Boyd's 'Waiting for Sunrise' which has the distinction of being the worst book I've ever read.

I was interested in Harris take on Neville Chamberlain in his book about the Munich meeting where he cast N.C. as a sharp cookie who had fleeced Hitler

[DracoM]

<< I will never read another book by Robert Harris >>

After being excited by earlier ones, latest three have been EXACTLY as desribed.

[Rjw]

Just read
The Path of Peace: Walking the Western Front Way by Anthony Seldon which was quite interesting although the author was a bit intrusive and I found him rather precious. But if you are vaguely interested in world war one a slightly different perspective.


Talking of the Great War I have also just read Way of revelation by Wilfrid Ewart which has been on my shelf for many years unread. Really good.

[smittims]

Intrusive authors in non-fiction (and in fiction too, I suppose) can be a nuisance. The only biography of Turgenev I could find was 'Twilight of Love' by Robert Dessay. I got past the chick-lit cover to read it and found a good book about my favourite novelist. But , like the adverts on YouTube, Dessay himself kept butting in to talk about his own private life . 'Why?' I wanted to scream , and more besides.

[muzzer]

Intrusive authors in non-fiction (and in fiction too, I suppose) can be a nuisance. The only biography of Turgenev I could find was 'Twilight of Love' by Robert Dessay. I got past the chick-lit cover to read it and found a good book about my favourite novelist. But , like the adverts on YouTube, Dessay himself kept butting in to talk about his own private life . 'Why?' I wanted to scream , and more besides.

There must be a more scholarly biog of Turgenev, he’s a massive figure. Where should I start with the fiction?

[richardfinegold]

August 1914 by Solzhenitsyn. I don’t think he gets as much credit as he merits for perceptiveness

[Pulcinella]

August 1914 by Solzhenitsyn. I don’t think he gets as much credit as he merits for perceptiveness

I've been contemplating re-reading Cancer Ward.

[Cockney Sparrow]

A fascinating book, which I wish he’d lived to finish.

As always with Culshaw, though, I’m left intrigued by the elusive personality of the writer who had a genius for revealing nothing important about himself.

After a busy week, I'm catching up with posts. This recalled Birgit Nilsson's biography where she told how she was approached to write a foreword (or quotable appreciation) for Culshaw's book (it might have been "Ring Resounding"though - I'm not sure). She replied that yes, she would, but only on condition that they guaranteed inclusion, and unchanged - and she heard no more. She took the greatest exception to Culshaw's deception in blaming Bjorling to explain away Solti's treatment of him in Rome at the rehearsal sessions for a recording of "Un Ballo de Maschera". Bjorling refused to reconstruct his interpretation of a part in which he had great experience, and submit to Solti's will, IIRC the recording was abandoned. Nilsson insists that Bjorling was professional throughout and did not present himself to perform inebriated. This comment (from Am.com) encapsulates the episode

"Culshaw’s book makes very entertaining reading and I’m sure most of it is true, but it has to be said that he was a man who liked to “embellish.” Probably the most egregious example being his remembrances of Jussi Bjorling. Bjorling was an alcoholic, but there are a (very) few known instances of him being drunk in public. At the Rome recording sessions of "Un Ballo in Maschera" the memoirs of everyone directly involved - Mrs. Bjorling, Birgit Nilsson, Cornel McNeil, and especially George Solti - all agree that he was cold sober during that time.

Culshaw wrote of waking in Vienna to find a “heavily intoxicated” Bjorling standing at the foot of his bed. In her biography of her husband, “Jussi”, Anna-Lisa Bjorling made no attempt to hide his problems with alcohol and, in fact, documented it’s effect on Bjorling and his family extensively. But she wrote: Apart from it’s being untrue, he (Culshaw) obviously hadn’t the slightest idea of what an uncontrollably drunk Jussi Bjorling looked like.”

During the Rome recording sessions for “Un Ballo” Solti had an entirely different concept of how Riccardo should be sung than Bjorling and according to Cornell McNeil, “Whatever he (Jussi) asked in my presence, they trampled all over him.” Solti wanted him to change everything - tempo, phrasing, dynamics, and nuances. Bjorling did refuse to rehearse as often as Solti wanted. He had, after all, sung the role for 24 years at that point with many of the finest conductors and had been personally coached in the part by Toscanini. Solti turned it into a contest of wills. But Bjorling was a dying man. As Solti acknowledged later “It wasn’t that he didn’t want to rehearse, he could not!”

All of which is not to decide at this late date whose memory was more accurate, Culshaw’s or Mrs. Bjorling, Nilsson, McNeil, and Solti, but to suggest that when you read Culshaw blaming other people for something that happened the proverbial grain of salt might be desireable."

[smittims]

Like many others, I enjoyed 'Ring Resounding' and 'Putting the Record Straight' in turn, for the fascinating information they provided; in particular,the second book seemed to be used as a chance to say the things he had been advised not to say in the first.

John Culshaw, though undoubtedly a genius of sorts, seems to have been a man of strong likes and dislikes, unusual in a record producer, I'd have thought, who needs to be a 'people person' able to get on with different temperaments and be tactful and persuasive. He seems almost tom have idolised some (Solti and Britten) and loathed others (Ansermet and Krips) , the latter curiously, since everyone else I've read says Krips was 'genial'.

And then there's the curious resignation from Decca, when he was at his peak. I don't think that's ever been really explained.

[JasonPalmer]

Reading the telegraph and listening to the afternoon concert, need to get a book from the library sometime, maybe more Andy McNabb, easy on the brain boys own adventure

[french frank]

Passing Through - short stories by my once-colleague (Aberdeen French dept) David Hartley. They're centred on the areas of Scotland he knows, his interests in birding and Munro-bagging and - cricket. 'Possibly the only person born in Idle [Yorks!] to have climbed all the Munros'.

He gave me a Proustian moment when he described a somewhat bare croft cottage - it vividly brought back a flashback of a cottage (bare floors, little furniture) I rented on Donside for several years.