RaveThe Times (UK)In this gigantic book devoted to a man who died at 35, the American composer and academic Jan Swafford has met that challenge head on and traces its source, with some conviction, to love ... Swafford’s prose flows beautifully and is often cheeringly informal ... This hefty book does have the occasional infelicity, such as Swafford’s speculation, not once but three times, that Casanova, in the audience for Don Giovanni (he had a hand in the libretto), would have been laughing ... Mozart was not a revolutionary artist and did not break especially new ground; he did, however, dig deeper and find unsuspected riches through his understanding of how to translate the human condition into the art of sound. Likewise, Swafford does not upend our vision of the composer, although he quashes myths with clear-sighted good sense. Instead, he too goes deeper, in his invocation of Mozart’s presence and what makes his music so special. For many his works are dear old friends. You can come away from this book feeling that he is too.
Jane Glover
PositiveThe Sunday TimesReading the conductor Jane Glover’s beautifully written account of George Frederick Handel’s professional life in the British capital, it might strike you that remarkably little has changed in the past 280-odd years ... Often this is not merely illuminating, but also touching ... But Glover can sometimes be too respectful of her subject, downplaying, for example, his reputedly irascible temper. In a perhaps slightly dutiful chronicling of opera after opera, she keeps technical terminology to a minimum. Still, she absolutely nails broader musical issues ... This book’s main achievement, though, is to evoke with admirable clarity and sympathy the rich, interdependent symbiosis between Handel, his singers, his audiences, the royal family and the great capital city that housed their life and work.
