[.ca] Concerto Conversations: With a 68-minute CD (ISBN 0674158911)

From Amazon.com:
For more than 40 years, since his seminal book Opera as Drama, Joseph Kerman has been among the most perceptive and lucid commentators on music. Readers new to his work will find a highly personable companion in Concerto Conversations, while those who already know it can appreciate a late-period distillation of his methods. In typical fashion, Kerman begins not with a preface of introduction but with a chapter on beginnings. There is a general division of the dynamic between soloist and orchestra into the concepts of "reciprocity" versus "polarity," but the book is really more a collection of highly individual observations about specific concertos. Kerman touches on some works lightly and deftly while giving others a fuller treatment. Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto, Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto (Kerman, blessedly, takes Tchaikovsky very seriously), Stravinsky's Concerto for Piano and Winds, and Mozart's D Minor Piano Concerto get the widest overviews. We find Kerman's love of language throughout: "High noon! One can almost see solo and orchestra glaring at each other" in the Beethoven; the strings in the Tchaikovsky are "sisterly, and secular." Kerman tosses off provocative ideas along the way: the concerto has already postdated the symphony, the great contrapuntist Bach used a fugal introduction to a concerto only once, and particular events in the life of Liszt affected his piano concertos. Kerman makes an important point in contrasting virtuosity with bravura. These elegant, concise lectures were first conceived for the Norton series at Harvard. A 12-track, 69-minute CD of musical examples (along with extensive musical quotations in an appendix) is included. --William R. Braun

The conversation continues:
This is an exceptional book. Kerman mixes just the right amount of scholarship and anecdote to satisfy a reader who prefers either approach. His metaphor of concerto as part of an ongoing musical conversation, not just between orchestra and solo instrument but also from composer to composer and epoch to epoch, lets the reader become part of a tradition known almost exclusively to composers of concerti. By the end of this book, one has certainly cultivated something important with regards to music appreciation of concerti, be they nudge or virtuoso. I even found myself "rooting" for this musical form in the end, hoping that composers today keep the conversation alive--and before this book, I was indifferent to the whole tradition.