Rating: 
Summary: Reviews
Review: "This is the liveliest, most penetrating and bestresearched book on the nature of the orchestra conductor, and on manyof the best-known past and current practitioners of that arcane art, to have appeared in years." --Publishers Weekly"Lively, nasty, well-researched, agreeably indiscreet and unfailingly engrossing...a valuable and serious book that is also a 'good read.'" --New York Newsday "Anyone serious about music will be stimulated, provoked and made greatly aware by this eye-opening treatment." --San Francisco Chronicle "Likely to be the most read 'classical music' book of the year." --Washington Post Book World "Vital, delicious-and dangerous to imposters behind the baton." --Kirkus Reviews. END
Rating: 
Summary: A Great Book to read, not particular Factual
Review: A great gossip book for conductors, Lebrecht book explores the fame of conductors and whether they really deserved it or not. It has numerous anecdotes on several conductors, though it sometimes skims over a conductor. For example, in the chapter discussing Great Conductorial Dictators (a list which comprised of Toscanini, Furtwangler, Szell, and Reiner), it covered in detail the lives of Toscanini and Furtwangler, but had a short paragraph on Szell and Reiner, though all four were listed in the chapter for discussion. The book moves quickly and efficiently, never staying on a topic, really, longer then it really needs to, though it may ramble a while on a particular conductor (devoting, for example, an entire chapter bashing on Karajan). He accuses many and congratulates few, but Lebrecht offers his opinion convincingly. It's an interesting read and many will be surprised to read about their favorite conductor.
Rating:
Summary: Annotation
Review: A vigorous and brilliantly iconoclastic anatomy of musical ambition, achievement and power, Norman Lebrecht's masterful chronicle considers the clout and character of every famous conductor from Richard Strauss to Herbert von Karajan to Leonard Bernstein to Simon Rattle, and examines the mounting crisis in a profession where genuine talent grows ever scarcer.
Rating: 
Summary: Overwrought piffle
Review: Backstairs gossip, blurted out in a confused, breathless stream-of-consciousness rant. Nothing particularly new, poorly proof-edited.
The maestro myth must still be very powerfully alive if it tempts a supposed grownup to this extreme of incoherence.
Rating: 
Summary: How Long is YOUR Baton?
Review: Every ensemble musician knows that all other factors being equal, an orchestra will sound entirely different depending on who is standing on the podium. Lebrecht provides an entertaining history of the great conductors and the art of musical leadership, beginning with the ancient Sumerians and into the rise of this centuries' superstar conductors. From Gustav Mahler, who was the first to demand executive control of all aspects of the Vienna Opera Houese, through the World War years of Bohm, Furtwangler and Karajan and their navigations through the politics of Nazi Germany, to Stowkowski, Toscanini
and their support of struggling composers, this book brings us to present day conductors and their immense influence on classical music.
Clear themes of ambition, ego, voracious sexual appetites
and the need for control emerge in these vignettes, which flow smoothly into the present day business and promotion of the great symphony conductors. A fascinating and well-written study of these strong-willed individuals.
Rating: 
Summary: Not much new here
Review: For anyone seriously involved in the classical music arts world,
there is very little in this 'tell-all' attempt that will provide new information. In addition, the writing style jumps around in such a manner that the reader is often confused as to the subject matter at hand.
Rating:
Summary: A most disappointing and negative experience
Review: I think that it is a much more difficult task to really comprohend what these HUMANS achieved in musical terms and writing about that than to expose there shortcomings as human beings. It would be naive to expect them to be perfect or as some would say - gods. I found the book to be totally one sided and disappointing in that regard. Not a book to get to know the man behind the recording.
Rating:
Summary: A most disappointing and negative experience
Review: I think that it is a much more difficult task to really comprohend what these HUMANS achieved in musical terms and writing about that than to expose there shortcomings as human beings. It would be naive to expect them to be perfect or as some would say - gods. I found the book to be totally one sided and disappointing in that regard. Not a book to get to know the man behind the recording.
Rating: 
Summary: Scholarship, not anectdotes, please!
Review: In my opinion, I find the writing to be less than scholarly, so to me, the themes of the book are brought into some question. "The Maestro Myth" appears to only be a rather shabby vehicle for Lebrecht to grind (and wield, albeit clumsily) a rather large axe... However having said this, Lebrecht's work reinforces my own personal decision to have detoured into conducting student ensembles, rather than share the company (if only by remote association) of the jackals herein described.
Rating:
Summary: Scholarship, not anectdotes, please!
Review: In my opinion, I find the writing to be less than scholarly, so to me, the themes of the book are brought into some question. "The Maestro Myth" appears to only be a rather shabby vehicle for Lebrecht to grind (and wield, albeit clumsily) a rather large axe... However having said this, Lebrecht's work reinforces my own personal decision to have detoured into conducting student ensembles, rather than share the company (if only by remote association) of the jackals herein described.
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