A Gentleman Out of Moscow

A Gentleman Out of Moscow

Goodbye Russia: Rachmaninoff in Exile By Fiona Maddocks. Pegasus Books, 2024. Hardcover, 384 pages, $29.95. Reviewed by Robert Bellafiore. In the last years of Romanov Russia, Sergei Rachmaninoff was enjoying life as a musical giant, composing such titanic hits as the...
Jeanne Demessieux: A Great Organist’s Centenary

Jeanne Demessieux: A Great Organist’s Centenary

By Robert James Stove What makes organists tick? Denis Arnold (1926–1986), British biographer of Bach and Monteverdi, thought that he knew. In 1983 he remarked: “Organists have to be neat men: their mistakes do not, like a doctor’s, quietly die, but are all too...
Salvation Through Compassion?

Salvation Through Compassion?

Wagner’s Parsifal: The Music of Redemption by Roger Scruton. Allen Lane, 2020. Hardcover, 208 pages, £20.00 Reviewed by Paul Krause “We have been called not to explore the world, but to rescue it. In doing so we emerge from our trials and conflicts in full possession...
Orpheus Britannicus

Orpheus Britannicus

A New English Music: Composers and Folk Traditions in England’s Musical Renaissance from the Late 19th to the Mid-20th Century by Tim Rayborn. McFarland & Co., 2016. Paperback, 312 pages, $40. Reviewed by R. J. Stove When I come to England, I don’t claim...
David Bowie and the Decade Science Fiction Took Off

David Bowie and the Decade Science Fiction Took Off

Strange Stars: How Science Fiction and Fantasy Transformed Popular Music by Jason Heller. Melville House, 2018. Hardcover, 272 pages, $27. Reviewed by Mark Judge In 1980, musician David Bowie released a new album, Scary Monsters. On the record was a song called “Ashes...