RaveThe Wall Street JournalHarvey Sachs, in his comprehensive new biography, Toscanini: Musician of Conscience, describes in detail the process of rehearsal, live performance and post-concert 'patching sessions' to correct minor slips in the recordings ... In 1978, Mr. Sachs published an excellent biography of Toscanini, but this entirely new one — not a revision — draws extensively on newly available archival material, especially Toscanini’s own letters, and offers a portrait that even more fully humanizes the Great Man ... Mr. Sachs is a lucid informant, providing all sorts of interesting details, down to which ships Toscanini took on his numerous Atlantic crossings ...you can’t help discovering one of the world’s greatest musical voices. Mr. Sachs’s necessary, authoritative biography reinforces that impression with a portrait of a complex, flawed, but noble human being and a towering artist.
