On Russian Music - Tapa dura

"[Taruskin's] command of this subject is surely unparalleled... This is an authoritative, consistently challenging, deeply engaging volume of essays - very strongly recommended."--Classical Music Magazine "Very entertaining."--New York Review of Books "[Taruskin's essays] demonstrate his ... rare gift for conveying complex information in a concise, accessible manner... An essential compendium."--Notes "Whether [Taruskin is] validating Susan McClary's sexist charges at Beethoven or implicitly acknowledging his debt to Donald Francis Tovey, reading his essays will make you a better, smarter person."--Huffington Post

Over the past four decades, Richard Taruskin's publications have redefined the field of Russian-music study. This volume gathers thirty-six essays on composers ranging from Bortnyansky in the eighteenth century to Tarnopolsky in the twenty-first, as well as all of the famous names in between. Some of these pieces, like the ones on Chaikovsky's alleged suicide and on the interpretation of Shostakovich's legacy, have won fame in their own right as decisive contributions to some of the most significant debates in contemporary musicology. An extensive introduction lays out the main issues and a justification of Taruskin's approach, seen both in the light of his intellectual development and in that of the changing intellectual environment, which has been particularly marked by the end of the cold war in Europe.