Obligato

Untold Tales from a Life With Music

by Ira Hirschmann

ISBN: 0880641541
ISBN-13: 9780880641548
Format: Hardcover

Customer Reviews

Media Reviews

"Sprinkled throughout [Hirschmann's] account are delightful, endearing, and sometimes humorous accounts of great artists of the day."

-- Library Journal

Bibliographic Details

Publisher: Fromm Intl
Published date: 1994
Size: 6.25 x 9.5 inches
Weight: 0.95 pounds

Publisher's Notes

Ira Hirschmann was a remarkable man of diverse interests and talents and outstanding accomplishments in every field he pursued. As a businessman, he was Vice President of Saks Fifth Avenue and Bloomingdale's, but he was also a diplomat, an anti-Nazi crusader, a pioneer in radio broadcasting, and a well-respected author. Music, however, was the underlying theme of his life, and his deepest passion. As founder and president of the influential New Friends of Music, which opened the rich world of chamber music to the American public, Hirschmann worked with many of the musical luminaries of our century, some of whom became close personal friends. In Obligato we meet Arturo Toscanini, Artur Schnabel - with whom he studied the piano - Bruno Walter, Lotte Lehmann, Arnold Schonberg, Rudolph Serkin, Bela Bartok, and many others. But Obligato is much more than just a collection of revealing episodes. For Hirschmann, music was a life-giving source which frequently played a decisive role in all his activities - whether he was fighting the Nazis and working for the release of concentration camp inmates, or was active in politics with his friend Fiorello LaGuardia, or was experimenting with new technologies. Completed shortly before his death in 1989 at the age of 88, Obligato captures an important era of American music history with great charm and enthusiasm.

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These recollections "of men and women whom I was fortunate enough to encounter and even know, and of events I reported" do not form a conventional autobiography. Rather, the author's more modest intention is simply to present not only the celebrated artists he came to know, but also some of the friends he made at The Times and in the U.S. Army during the Second World War. Readers will share vignettes of Toscanini, Casals, and Shostakovich; Alfred Lunt, Richard Burton, Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini; Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Marian Anderson, and dozens of other luminaries of the musical and theatrical worlds. There is an account of Vladimir Horowitz attending a Cardinals-Mets game that adds a wholly unexpected dimension to the great pianist's legendary eccentricities! Supplemented by photographs from the New York Times archives and the author's own collection, this affectionate memoir will inform and delight any reader with an interest in music and theater in our time.

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Obligato: Untold Tales from a Life With Music

Ira Hirschmann

Fromm Intl. Used - Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Shipped to over one million happy customers! Your purchase benefits world literacy! (more information)

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