Adrian Boult - Softcover

Kennedy, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0333487524 ISBN 13: 9780333487525

Publisher: Pan Macmillan, 1989

Synopsis

This biography of the major English conductor Adrian Boult offers a searching account of his long and complex life. The author had access to Boult's private papers, letters and diaries to research this portrait which traces the composer's life from his school days through to his friendships with Elgar, Holst and Vaughan Williams. There are also lesser known and surprising aspects - his unpredictable temper, his distrust and dislike of Beecham and the mutual bitternesss between Boult and Britten. Michael Kennedy has been a music critic of the "Daily Telegraph" for over 35 years and has written biographical studies of Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Britten, Mahler, Strauss and Barbirolli and is editor of the "Oxford Dictionary of Music". He was awarded the OBE for services to music in 1981.

About this title

About the Author:

Michael Kennedy is the doyen of writers on English music of the last one hundred and fifty years. His scope is wider than that, as books on Mahler and Strauss testify, but it is his works on Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Walton that accord him this rank. For many years he worked for the Daily Telegraph and was its Northern Editor from 1960 to 1986. He became its joint chief music critic in 1986 and in 1989 became chief music critic of the Sunday Telegraph. He retired in 2005. For his services to music he was appointed OBE in 1981 and CBE in 1997. He received the honorary degree of Doctor of Music from Manchester University in 2003, in 2004 became the second recipient of the Vaughan Williams Society's Medal of Distinction and was elected an honorary member of the Royal Philharmonic Society in 2005.

From Publishers Weekly:

One of England's greatest conductors, Sir Adrian Boult (1889-1983) is best known for his 20 years with the BBC, from which, the author notes, he was unjustifiably and ignominiously fired, and for his many subsequent years of freelance concertizing and recording. In this detailed, well-balanced work, based on hitherto unavailable material, a British critic and biographer describes a man of wide and cultivated tastes to whom music was really all that mattered. Boult would have liked to conduct opera, and he was a great interpreter of Beethoven, Schubert and Brahams, but cirumstances and his own genius molded him into a champion of contemporary British music and a supreme conductor of Elgar and Vaughan Williams. He seemed gentle, unassuming, sometimes indifferent, but to his musicians he showed commitment and passion, according to Kennedy. For the increasing number of American devotees of 20th century British music, this will be an essential volume. Photos.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Publication date: 1989
• ISBN 10: 0333487524
• ISBN 13: 9780333487525
• Binding: Paperback