San Antonio College Library

Interviews with the world's twenty-three top orchestral conductors provide the basis for accounts of their training, musical tastes, podium techniques, repertoires, lifestyles, and achievements.

This biography explores Karajan's life and music making against the background of European music and politics in the years 1908-1989. Periods in Karajan's life hitherto ignored or believed to have been in some way "covered up"--his childhood in Austria during and after the First World War and his early career as a conductor in Nazi Germany--are frankly and revealingly explored. This is the "jet-set megastar" who was in reality a shy, music-obsessed,...

"'He is of commanding presence, infinite dignity, fabulous memory, vast experience, high temperament and serene wisdom. He has been tempered in the crucible but he is still molten and he glows with a fierce inner light. He is many things: musician, administrator, executive, minister, psychologist, technician, philosopher and dispenser of wrath. Like many great men, he has come from humble stock; and, like many great men in the public eye, he is instinctively...

Maestro follows Grammy award-winning conductor Paavo Järvi and an array of brilliant musicians as they perform to sold-out music halls around the world. Järvi, musical director of the Orchestre de Paris, takes us on a creative journey rich in culture and history. Interviews and an original score from an array of today's top musical talent round out a passionate film that reminds us that what we call classical music was once a rebellion against...