Quintet : five journeys toward musical fulfillment /

The late musician and writer David Blum conducted extended interviews with five renowned musical performers that led to pieces in The New Yorker and The New York Times, pieces collected in the present volume. The musicians (Yo-Yo Ma, Jeffrey Tate, Josef Gingold, Richard Goode, Birgit Nilsson) distinguished themselves in various ways; Blum emphasizes different aspects of each career and personality. Tate, for example, faced severe physical challenges on his road to professional eminence. Blum does not shrink from this fact, but neither does he let it overshadow Tate's artistic achievement. The lives described here, dauntingly complex in many respects, should serve as cautionary models for those who aspire to performing careers. Blum never fawns over his subjects, and his deep musical acumen allows him to place Goode's Schubert and Ma's Bach in appropriate perspective. Would that the literature included similarly knowing, firsthand portraits of the great musicians of the 18th and 19th centuries; they would have helped alter the study of historical performance practice. Recommended for any library with a general music collection. B. J. Murray; University of Alabama

The classical musician's life can seem sublime, a matter of expressing beauty every day. As Blum presents the lives of cellist Yo-Yo Ma, conductor Jeffrey Tate, concertmaster Josef Gingold, pianist Richard Goode, and soprano Birgit Nilsson, they don't contradict that presumed sublimity. All five speak happily and wonderingly about the music that means the most to them: for Ma, Bach's unaccompanied cello suites; for Goode, Schubert's last sonatas; for Nilsson, Wagner's operas; for Tate and Gingold, the symphonic and chamber core repertoires. Of course, each has had to cope with personal foibles and incapacities; for instance, Ma was a foolhardy youngster, and Tate has been severely disabled from birth. But each is pleased to be engaged with music, and all consider themselves figures in a historical continuum of musical performance that is, like the pieces they play, greater than themselves. Moreover, each is a teacher of young musicians; indeed, Gingold is an acknowledged titan among violin teachers. Blum's profiles of them, organized as a book just before his death, are like five lovely songs. --Ray Olson

The late conductor-turned-journalist Blum was one of the most articulate of all contemporary writers on music. These extended portraits of five musical luminaries--Yo Yo Ma, Jeffrey Tate, Josef Gingold, Richard Goode, and Birgit Nilsson--first appeared in The New Yorker and the New York Times and are all remarkable documents about remarkable people. The first chapter on Ma provides readers with a fascinating glimpse of the cellist. Among the most moving chapters are those on Tate, who overcame severe physical disabilities to become a world-class conductor, and Gingold, a Russian ‚migr‚ who rose from poverty to become a revered concert master and teacher. Blum's pieces rely on conversations with his subjects and extensive interviews with their relatives, friends, and associates. His own personality is unobtrusive, yet his keen musical intelligence runs like a thread throughout. Recommended for public and college libraries.--Larry A. Lipkis, Moravian Coll., Bethlehem, PA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Inspired by an interviewer trusted as a confidant, five world-class musicians help him sketch engrossing self-portraits. Orchestra founder Blum (Casals and the Art of Interpretation, not reviewed) knows that ``a person with artistic gifts will usually develop in one of two ways: as an artist at the expense of others, or as a human being at the expense of art.'' Yet his forthcoming subjects reveal how, despite diverse trials, they avoided either trap. Soprano Birgit Nilsson overcame voice-damaging instructors. Cellist Yo-Yo Ma, son of traditional Chinese parents, had to tame his own Americanized teenage wildness. Russian- born violinist Josef Gingold, longtime Cleveland Orchestra concertmaster, writhed under cruelty as an immigrant boy. Pianist Richard Goode, celebrated for his Schubert and Beethoven, still wrestles with dire stage fright. Jeffrey Tate, certified as a doctor, turned full-time conductor only after pain from his deformed spine acted like a ``refiner's fire.'' As these highly accomplished performers reflect unpretentiously on their core musical experiences, Blum weaves in commentary from colleagues and partners, cherishing the incidental humanizing touch: Goode heading for a campus concert, a bag of books and scores on his back, still the student; devoted teacher Gingold's ``jealous mistress'' of a violin challenging him each morning: 'I dare you''; Nilsson, known for her aquavit wit, pausing at the local churchyard to water her parents' grave. Striving to cast sound into words, and laud towering talents without fawning, Blum occasionally turns grandiloquent, but he never obstructs our view as his sitters answer what must have been prescient questions with fluent candor. The author's illness precluded updating these previously published heroes' tales before his 1996 death; this memorial would have benefited from a current discography. As good writers about art should, Blum sends the reader back to the works afresh'seeking these five interpreters as mentors. (5 b&w photos)