From Boulanger to Stockhausen: Interviews and a Memoir (Eastman Studies in Music #104)

Hardcover Cloth 394 pages. Condition Very Good Dust Jacket Very Good. Presumed First edition 2013. Elegant dark blue boards and silver embossing shows off this Clean, tight, square copy with no marks, highlights or bookplates. Book Well kept and carefully stored in unread condition. Slight shelf wear. An unclipped dust jacket smooth, clean and brilliant with slight shelf wear - a few wrinkles and chips. Not an ex-library, book club or remainder copy.

First English-language publication of fascinating interviews with world-renowned composers (György Ligeti), conductors (Claudio Abbado), singers (Elisabeth Schwarzkopf), instrumentalists (Yehudi Menuhin, Alfred Brendel), and more.

Bálint András Varga makes available here for the first time in English nineteen extended interviews with some of the most notable figures in music from the past fifty years, as well as lively snippets from interviews Varga conducted with thirteen other equally renowned musicians.

The interviewees include singers Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Cathy Berberian; pianists Alfred Brendel and Arthur Rubinstein; violinists Isaac Stern and Yehudi Menuhin; conductors Claudio Abbado and Sir Neville Marriner; composers György Ligeti and Karlheinz Stockhausen; and legendary pedagogue Nadia Boulanger.

Of special interest is an interview with the reclusive composer György Kurtág, here published for the first time in any language.

From Boulanger to Stockhausen concludes with a poignant memoir by Varga of his experiences growing up in a Jewish family in Hungary during World War II and the early years of Communist rule. Varga's recollections also include details about his many interviews with some of these remarkable musicians, and about his employment at the Hungarian state radio station and then in the music-publishing industry, which brought him to, among other places, Vienna, where he now lives.

Bálint András Varga has spent more than forty years working for and with composers. His previous books include György Kurtá Three Interviews and Ligeti Homages and Three Questions for Sixty-Five Composers, both published by the University of Rochester Press.