Conversations with Cardus Book

From dust jacket: "Neville Cardus was one of the great critics of this century, and also one of the great prose writers. He was equally outstanding as a a writer about music and about cricket; he was also a wonderful conversationalist. Through the last three years of his life he worked with Robin Daniels on this book, which first took the form of tape recordings, and was completed only six weeks before Sir Neville's death at the age of 85. It gives us, with delightful freshness and informality, the distillation of his views on many matters. There are reminiscences of his musical beginnings, and of his Guardian predecessor Ernest Newman's influence on him. He enjoys again the heyday of the music-hall. He recalls the conducting of Richter, the beginnings of the gramophone, the days when he earned a guinea by singing at smoking concerts. his cricket memories go equally far back, to the great Victor Trumper - 'try to imagine a combination of Compton and Dexter'. He talks of composers, from Mozart to Stockhausen. He admits to startling blind spots in his musical appreciation. His recollections of outstanding performers of recent times form the book's main section: Lotte Lehmann, Chaliapin, Gigli, Callas, Kathleen Ferrier, Kreisler, Heifetz, Menuhin, Schnabel, Horowitz, Arrau, Curzon, Beecham, Klemperer, Toscanini. Inevitably, there are splendid Beecham stories - and some penetrating criticism of Beecham as a conductor. He compares some of the world's great orchestras, with fascinating speculation on their variations of string tone. He discusses why women have made a comparatively small contribution to music. Among our younger composers he picks out Malcolm Williamson - who has just been appointed Master of the Queen's Musick. He throws off aphorisms - 'There are no hackneyed masterpieces, only hackneyed critics', 'A critic should have the score in his head, not his head in a score.' And when asked his views on the afterlife, he replied: 'I believe in life before death.'"Read More