Our critics cast their eyes over this month’s selection of books on classical music
Gregory Haimovsky: A Pianist’s Odyssey to Freedom Marissa Silverman University of Rochester Press ISBN 9781-58046-931-9 280pp £60.00 Who is Gregory Haimovsky? It turns out that he was almost single-handedly responsible for introducing the music of Messiaen to the USSR: the ‘odyssey’ of this book.
A talented pianist, who was not always prepared to toe the official line (an attitude made even more hazardous by his Jewish identity) he was shunted from the Moscow Conservatoire to a lowly job in provincial Kalinin – where he mostly managed to stay under the radar – then moved to Leningrad, Gorky, and back to Moscow, before emigrating to Israel, and ending up in New York. His discovery of Messiaen was almost accidental, but the religious ecstasy of the music gave him a release from the greyness of Soviet life, and he made it a mission to introduce it to Russia.
Silverman studied with Haimovsky, and there is an air of hero-worship at times, together with some academic phraseology which can make the book read like a thesis. When Haimovsky is allowed to speak for himself, the book springs into life, but with a list price of £60, it’s a niche product. Martin Cotton ★★★
A Musical Wanderer – The Later Years of Granville Bantock Cuillin Bantock EM Publishing ISBN 978-0-95729423-3 220pp £10.00 This micro-biography takes in the last eight years (1938-46) of British composer Sir Granville Bantock’s life, and takes its lead from his own diaries. Bantock, also a celebrated conductor and arranger, was not a conceited diarist; he never got caught up in his own musings, and certainly steered clear of emotion. Instead, he liked to record the things he did, the people he met, the places he visited, the lunches he ate and the music he worked on. You’d think this would make for a banal read, and it’s true that the sometimes overly forensic analysis of the man’s life – by his own grandson – through such brief entries verges on the soporific at times. But Bantock was a largerthan-life character and even in these final years he remained boundlessly energetic, seemingly keeping the excesses of the bygone Edwardian age he’d lived through very much in the present.
Cuillin Bantock paints a picture of a man with an insatiable appetite for life, who found fame in his own lifetime, though worked hard to maintain his relevance, and a lifestyle founded on music, friends, food, travel and books. ★is was a colourful existence, so it’s perhaps a small shame he only recorded it in various shades of grey. Michael Beek ★★★
The Tchaikovsky Papers: Unlocking the Family Archive Ed. Marina Kostalevsky Yale ISBN 978-0-300-19136-3 256pp £35 This cache of letters by the Tchaikovsky family, largely to one another, makes absorbing and rather cheering reading. The first 50 pages are actually a bit dull, Tchaikovsky’s parents writing to one another in what the editor calls the style of Sentimentalism, adopted from the 18th-century epistolary novels – Richardson is referred to early in Eugene Onegin. When we reach the composer and his younger brothers, who were twins, things get more racy and more encouraging.
We have been led to believe that Tchaikovsky was a traditionally tormented gay man, but his accounts to various relations and friends, written from European cities, show that he was an assiduous cruiser of young men and rent boys, proud of it, and highly successful. Only his fear of being exposed caused his anxiety and led to his disastrous, two-month marriage. Unfortunately the last substantial letters from him are dated more than ten years before his death.
This is an illuminating, well-produced volume, though it sheds no light on his compositions. Michael Tanner ★★★★
Van Gogh and Music: A Symphony in Blue and Yellow Natascha Veldhorst Yale ISBN 9780-300-22833-5 184pp £25.00 Vincent van Gogh frequently referenced music in his correspondence, notably describing his sunflower studies as a ‘symphony in blue and yellow’.
Van Gogh and Music, newly translated by Diane Webb from the original Dutch for this beautifully presented edition, analyses the impact sound had on the painter’s work, using his letters as primary evidence. This technique is dry but necessary as the influence of music is nuanced: Van Gogh did not seek musical subjects, besides his painting of Marguerite Gachet at the piano; his interest lay at the point where art and music intersect.
Most intriguing is the effect that Wagner had on Van Gogh, particularly the composer’s ideas about art as a substitute for religion (Van Gogh had wanted to be a theologian before becoming an artist) the Gesamtkunstwerk concept, and embracing excess. (When Van Gogh painted ‘The Bedroom’ he described intensifying the colours just as Wagner had done with an embellished orchestra). Through ten illustrated chapters, Natascha Veldhorst presents a compelling argument that music is inextricably linked to Van Gogh’s work, and gives a fascinating – if not scintillating – account of the 19th-century arts scene. Claire Jackson ★★★★