Get Your Free Audiobook
-
Shoot the Conductor: Too Close to Monteux, Szell, and Ormandy
- Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Series, Book 7
- Narrated by: John Burlinson
- Length: 12 hrs and 11 mins
- Categories: Arts & Entertainment, Music
Non-member price: $34.76
People who bought this also bought...
-
Maestros and Their Music
- The Art and Alchemy of Conducting
- By: John Mauceri
- Narrated by: John Mauceri
- Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
John Mauceri brings a lifetime of experience to bear in an unprecedented, hugely informative, consistently entertaining exploration of his profession, rich with anecdotes from decades of working alongside the greatest names of the music world. With candor and humor, Mauceri makes clear that conducting is itself a composition: of legacy and tradition, techniques handed down from master to apprentice - and more than a trace of ineffable magic.
-
Toscanini
- Musician of Conscience
- By: Harvey Sachs
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 40 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
During a 68-year career, conductor Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957) was famed for his fierce dedication, photographic memory, explosive temper, and impassioned performances. At various times he dominated La Scala, the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, the NBC Symphony, and the Bayreuth, Salzburg, and Lucerne festivals. His reforms influenced generations of musicians, and his opposition to Nazism and fascism made him a model for artists of conscience.
-
Johann Sebastian Bach
- The Learned Musician
- By: Christoph Wolff
- Narrated by: John Pruden
- Length: 21 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Although we have heard the music of J. S. Bach in countless performances and recordings, the composer himself still comes across only as an enigmatic figure in a single familiar portrait. As we mark the 250th anniversary of Bach's death, author Christoph Wolff presents a new picture that brings to life this towering figure of the Baroque era. This engaging new biography portrays Bach as the living, breathing, and sometimes imperfect human being that he was, while bringing to bear all the advances of the last half-century of Bach scholarship.
-
-
Loved it - very interesting and detailed insight
- By Duncan on 01-03-2019
-
Counterpoint
- A Memoir of Bach and Mourning
- By: Philip Kennicott
- Narrated by: Paul Heitsch
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As his mother was dying, Philip Kennicott began to listen to the music of Bach obsessively. It was the only music that didn't seem trivial or irrelevant, and it enabled him to both experience her death and remove himself from it. He spent the next five years trying to learn one of the composer's greatest keyboard masterpieces, the Goldberg Variations. In Counterpoint, he recounts his efforts to rise to the challenge, and to fight through his grief by coming to terms with his memories of a difficult, complicated childhood.
-
The Indispensable Composers
- A Personal Guide
- By: Anthony Tommasini
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 20 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Indispensable Composers, Tommasini offers his own personal guide to the canon - and what greatness really means in classical music. What does it mean to be canonical now? Who gets to say? And do we have enough perspective on the 20th century to even begin assessing it? To make his case, Tommasini draws on elements of biography, the anxiety of influence, the composer's relationships with colleagues, and shifting attitudes toward a composer's work over time.
-
Bach
- Music in the Castle of Heaven
- By: John Eliot Gardiner
- Narrated by: Antony Ferguson
- Length: 21 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
John Eliot Gardiner grew up passing one of the only two authentic portraits of Bach every morning and evening on the stairs of his parents’ house, where it hung for safety during World War II. He has been studying and performing Bach ever since, and is now regarded as one of the composer's greatest living interpreters. The fruits of this lifetime's immersion are distilled in this remarkable book, grounded in the most recent Bach scholarship but moving far beyond it.
-
Maestros and Their Music
- The Art and Alchemy of Conducting
- By: John Mauceri
- Narrated by: John Mauceri
- Length: 9 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
John Mauceri brings a lifetime of experience to bear in an unprecedented, hugely informative, consistently entertaining exploration of his profession, rich with anecdotes from decades of working alongside the greatest names of the music world. With candor and humor, Mauceri makes clear that conducting is itself a composition: of legacy and tradition, techniques handed down from master to apprentice - and more than a trace of ineffable magic.
-
Toscanini
- Musician of Conscience
- By: Harvey Sachs
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 40 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
During a 68-year career, conductor Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957) was famed for his fierce dedication, photographic memory, explosive temper, and impassioned performances. At various times he dominated La Scala, the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, the NBC Symphony, and the Bayreuth, Salzburg, and Lucerne festivals. His reforms influenced generations of musicians, and his opposition to Nazism and fascism made him a model for artists of conscience.
-
Johann Sebastian Bach
- The Learned Musician
- By: Christoph Wolff
- Narrated by: John Pruden
- Length: 21 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Although we have heard the music of J. S. Bach in countless performances and recordings, the composer himself still comes across only as an enigmatic figure in a single familiar portrait. As we mark the 250th anniversary of Bach's death, author Christoph Wolff presents a new picture that brings to life this towering figure of the Baroque era. This engaging new biography portrays Bach as the living, breathing, and sometimes imperfect human being that he was, while bringing to bear all the advances of the last half-century of Bach scholarship.
-
-
Loved it - very interesting and detailed insight
- By Duncan on 01-03-2019
-
Counterpoint
- A Memoir of Bach and Mourning
- By: Philip Kennicott
- Narrated by: Paul Heitsch
- Length: 8 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As his mother was dying, Philip Kennicott began to listen to the music of Bach obsessively. It was the only music that didn't seem trivial or irrelevant, and it enabled him to both experience her death and remove himself from it. He spent the next five years trying to learn one of the composer's greatest keyboard masterpieces, the Goldberg Variations. In Counterpoint, he recounts his efforts to rise to the challenge, and to fight through his grief by coming to terms with his memories of a difficult, complicated childhood.
-
The Indispensable Composers
- A Personal Guide
- By: Anthony Tommasini
- Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
- Length: 20 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Indispensable Composers, Tommasini offers his own personal guide to the canon - and what greatness really means in classical music. What does it mean to be canonical now? Who gets to say? And do we have enough perspective on the 20th century to even begin assessing it? To make his case, Tommasini draws on elements of biography, the anxiety of influence, the composer's relationships with colleagues, and shifting attitudes toward a composer's work over time.
-
Bach
- Music in the Castle of Heaven
- By: John Eliot Gardiner
- Narrated by: Antony Ferguson
- Length: 21 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
John Eliot Gardiner grew up passing one of the only two authentic portraits of Bach every morning and evening on the stairs of his parents’ house, where it hung for safety during World War II. He has been studying and performing Bach ever since, and is now regarded as one of the composer's greatest living interpreters. The fruits of this lifetime's immersion are distilled in this remarkable book, grounded in the most recent Bach scholarship but moving far beyond it.
Publisher's Summary
Anshel Brusilow started playing violin in 1933 at age five, in a Russian Jewish neighborhood of Philadelphia where practicing your instrument was as ordinary as hanging out the laundry. His playing wasn’t ordinary, though. At 16, he was soloing with the Philadelphia Orchestra. He was also studying conducting.
Brusilow’s tumultuous relationships with Pierre Monteux, George Szell, and Eugene Ormandy shaped his early career. Under Szell, Brusilow was associate concertmaster at the Cleveland Orchestra until Ormandy snatched him away to make him concertmaster in Philadelphia, where he remained from 1959 to 1966. But he was unsatisfied with the violin. Even as concertmaster of the Philadelphia Orchestra, he felt the violin didn’t give him enough of the music. He wanted to conduct. He formed chamber groups on the side; he conducted summer concerts of the Philadelphia Orchestra. The price was high: it ruined his father-son relationship with Ormandy. Brusilow turned in his violin bow for the baton and created his own Philadelphia Chamber Symphony. Next he took on the then-troubled Dallas Symphony Orchestra.
Brusilow played with or conducted many top-tier classical musicians and has something to say about each one. He also made many recordings. Co-written with Robin Underdahl, his memoir is a fascinating view of American classical music as well as an inspiring story of a working-class immigrant child making good in a tough arena.
The audiobook is published by University of North Texas Press.
Foreword Reviews, 2015 INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award Winner in Performing Arts and Music.
Critic Reviews
“This is a book to be inhaled not just read. Its humor, poignancy, and disappointment crackle through every line in the book." (New York Journal of Books)
"Brusilow captivates with stories of conductors Leopold Stokowski, Pierre Monteux, George Szell, Eugene Ormandy." (Philadelphia Inquirer)
More from the same
What listeners say about Shoot the Conductor: Too Close to Monteux, Szell, and Ormandy
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
16 Best Audiobooks by Aboriginal Authors
Across genres, there’s no shortage of brilliant titles from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers of Australia.



25 Best Celebrity Audiobooks
It’s always a pleasant surprise to pick up a familiar story and find an unexpected famous friend in the narrator’s booth.



Best Audiobooks of 2020
We've crunched the numbers, heard from our listeners and gotten expert opinions to round up the best listens of 2020.


