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The very best music criticism sets out to entertain as well as inform; and this anthology dating from roughly 1800 to 1950, is a delight from start to finish. The reviews in this collection are unfavourable to the point of hostility and were predominantly written when the music was new: when what have now become accepted classics were unfamiliar and therefore 'difficult'. Slonimsky, its erudite compiler who died aged over 100 has been known as a scholar and wit in the mould of Nabokov, and made his selections with a venomous delight: 'Richard Strauss...is either a lunatic, or rapidly approaching idiocy', crowned the New York Musical Courier in 1899 at the premiere there of Ein Heldenleben. At the same time, French critics were to call Debussy's La Mer 'Le Mal de Mer', while Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps became 'Le Massacre du Printempts.' Never was a compilation such wicked and intelligent fun as this 'Rimsky Korsakov, what a name! It suggests fierce whiskers stained with vodka!' Read on: I know that Jeffrey Bernard would, if he were alive and well. (Kirkus UK)
