Our critics cast their eyes over this month’s selection of books on classical music
Beethoven’s Lives
Lewis Lockwood
Boydell Press 208pp (hb) £18.99
This short book is well timed: with the avalanche of Beethoven biographies reaching a climax, we needed someone to sort the wheat from the chaff, and to show how these books reflect the mood of their times. No surprise, for example, that Beethoven commentaries in Nazi Germany should stress the Aryan purity of their subject; interesting that Richard Wagner should have nursed ambitions (never realised) to write a life which would be ‘more a great novel about an artist than a dry listing of data and anecdotes compiled in chronological order’.
As a leading Beethoven biographer, Lewis Lockwood has earned the right to pontificate, and his commentaries are succinct and authoritative on the heroes and villains of the competition which began before the composer was cold in his grave. If the chief villain is Schindler, the hero is Thayer, whose unfinished masterpiece remains a timeless triumph of patient scholarship. Wegeler and Riess win plaudits; Gustav Nottebohm, Grove and Tovey get their moment in the limelight; Maynard Solomon, who passed away just months ago, is justly extolled as the ideal postfreudian commentator. No startling new insights here, and the end simply fizzles out, but this is a useful volume. Michael Church ★★★
Continental Riff
Isabel Rogers
Farrago 246pp (pb) £8.99
This is the third in Isabel Rogers’s series of light-hearted novels which chart the travails of the Stockwell Park Orchestra, a fictional London amateur orchestra. Set in the wake of the EU referendum, Continental Riff follows the orchestra on tour to Germany to take part in the Cologne Bruckner Festival, whereon a succession of japes and logistical scrapes ensue.
Rogers captures the foibles and wry good humour of the British amateur orchestral scene with affectionate warmth and she finds ample new material in the ensemble’s adventures across the concert halls, budget hotels and bierkellers of West Germany. Both a poet and fiction author, Rogers brings a true poet’s ear to her musical descriptions which are written with a wonderful sense of invention and poignancy: a solo French horn emerges from the orchestral texture ‘like a dolphin changing worlds as it breathes above water’. Indeed, there is something of a disjuncture between these beautiful passages and the somewhat relentless tone of banterous informality that characterises much of the storytelling. Nonetheless, this an astute and often enjoyable book which marks a welcome addition to the Stockwell Park Orchestra series. Kate Wakeling ★★★
The Final Symphony – A Beethoven Anthology Brandon Montclare
& Frank Marraffino
Z2 Comics 144pp (pb) £18.04
Of all the various ideas dreamed up to mark Beethoven’s 250th anniversary last year, this is certainly one of the more leftfield. In what calls itself a graphic novel anthology, you get a comic bookstyle narrative of moments from Beethoven’s life interspersed with short tales that colourfully imagine the ageing composer’s fever-fuelled dreams, inspired by the major literary figures of his day – from Christian Gellert, the ‘German Aesop’, to the likes of Goethe and Schiller. Though the texts are written by the same authors throughout, a range of artists provide a variety of visual styles, and each chapter is designed to be read to the accompaniment of a specified piece of Beethoven’s
The Lost Pianos of Siberia Sophy Roberts
Doubleday 384pp (pb) £9.99
‘Even assuming my excursion is an utter triviality… my time costs nothing,’ wrote Anton Chekhov of his journey through Siberia in 1890. John Steinbeck agreed, embarking on his trip across the USSR 50 years later: ‘If we could do it, it would be a good story. And if we couldn’t do it, we would have a story, too.’ Sophy Roberts had a similar outlook to these literary giants – but a very different purpose. Her aim was to source one of Siberia’s longlost pianos for a talented young pianist she had met in Mongolia’s Orkhon Valley, who lacked an instrument worthy of her abilities.
Roberts’s journey takes her across the desolate Siberian landscape, unpacking the intersection of music and politics in Russia’s dramatic history. Such moments include Catherine the Great’s generous patronage of the arts and the boom in the piano market, the mass exodus of Russia’s leading musicians during the 1917 Revolution and the damage to music education during the era of the Perestroika political reformation movement. Russia’s continual eradication of its history makes Roberts’s investigation relentlessly challenging, and few pianos are discovered. Nevertheless, her search uncovers some fascinating stories about the families who owned the instruments.
Freya Parr ★★★★