Word: toscanini
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Joseph Horowitz, the author of Understanding Toscanini, now can claim a distinguished place on the long list...
...book is named after an Italian-born conductor, and it brings a staggering amount of research to bear on the career of Arturo Toscanini, the classical music cult figure who, after his adoption by America, became a symbol of the supposed parity between American and European culture...
...ultimately Horowitz, who wrote a critically-acclaimed book recording his conversations with Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau, focuses not so much on Toscanini as a man or musician as on the millions of Americans who canonized him, taking it as an article of faith that Toscanini was the "greatest conductor of all time...
Extrapolating into the 1980s his conclusions about the career of Toscanini, who died in 1957, Horowitz presents a searing and largely convincing critique of music and other performing arts in America...
This book is radical. It endorses a Marxist-based understanding of musical culture in America, vehemently denies that widely publicized high culture represents the best around, and not least, definitively debunks the myths that surrounded Toscanini...