Norman Lebrecht Norman Lebrecht

Norman Lebrecht (born 11 July 1948 in London) is a British commentator on music and cultural affairs, a novelist, and the author of the classical music blog Slipped Disc.

He was a columnist for The Daily Telegraph from 1994 to 2002, and assistant editor of the London Evening Standard from 2002 to 2009. On BBC Radio 3, Lebrecht presented lebrecht.live beginning in 2000, and The Lebrecht Interview from 2006 to 2016. He won the 2002 Whitbread Award for First Novel for The Song of Names, at the age of 54. He also writes a column for the magazine Standpoint. Gilbert Kaplan described him as "surely the most controversial and arguably the most influential journalist covering classical music."

Early and personal life

Lebrecht was born in London, England, to Solomon (a metal merchant) and Marguerite (Klein) Lebrecht. He attended Kol Torah Rabbinical College in Jerusalem, Israel, in 1964–65, and Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel, from 1966 to 1968.

In 1977 Lebrecht married Elbie Spivack, a sculptor, editor, and author. They have three daughters: Naama Shulamit, Abigail Shira, and Gabriella Clara.

Radio and writing career

From 1970 until 1972 Lebrecht was a reporter and producer at the Israel Broadcasting Authority, Israel's state broadcasting network, in Jerusalem, Israel. Then, from 1973 until 1978 he was a news executive in London and New York, for Visnews Ltd., a London-based international news agency. Beginning in 1981 he was a special contributor to The Sunday Times, London, the largest-selling British national newspaper in the "quality press" market category.

From 1994 until 2002 Lebrecht was a columnist for The Daily Telegraph in Britain. From 2002 until 2015 he was an arts columnist and assistant editor of the Evening Standard, writing a weekly column. Gilbert Kaplan wrote that "From his perch in London he has covered and uncovered the classical music world in his full-page weekly column in the Evening Standard which through the internet is must-reading around the world ... concentrating on reporting on the organizations and the people managing – or as he often sees it, mismanaging – the classical music world as well as the stars who dominate this culture. All this with a sensibility normally associated with a political reporter or even a police reporter. He was the first to predict the demise of the major classical record companies – now documented in his recently released book The Life and Death of Classical Music."

Beginning in 2000, he presented lebrecht.live (a cultural debate forum where "issues in the arts are debated and hotly disputed by makers and consumers of culture") on BBC Radio 3, whose output centres on classical music and opera. From 2006 until 2016 he also hosted The Lebrecht Interview ("Classical music critic Norman Lebrecht talks to major figures in the field"), also on BBC Radio 3.

Lebrecht in 2007 launched his classical music blog Slipped Disc, for which he writes. It attracts over one million readers per month. He also writes a monthly column for the culture magazine Standpoint. Gilbert Kaplan described him in 2007 as "surely the most controversial and arguably the most influential journalist covering classical music."

In 2014, Lebrecht received the Cremona Music Award from Mondomusica and Cremona Pianoforte in the Communication category, recognizing his "commitment ... to the diffusion of the music culture at a global level."

Books

Lebrecht has written 12 books about music, which have been translated into 17 languages.

His book The Maestro Myth: Great Conductors in Pursuit of Power (Citadel Press; 1991) charts the history of conducting, from its rise as an independent profession in the 1870s to its subsequent preoccupations with power, wealth, and celebrity. When the Music Stops: Managers, Maestros and the Corporate Murder of Classical Music (Pocket Books; US title: Who Killed Classical Music?: Maestros, Managers, and Corporate Politics, Carol Publishing Group, 1997) is a history of the classical-music business, presenting an exposé of its backstage workings and predicting the collapse of the record industry. Herman Trotter of the Buffalo News wrote that Lebrecht's: "widely discussed 1992 book "The Maestro Myth" seems to have been a warm-up for his current magnum opus." Maestros, Masterpieces and Madness: The Secret Life and Shameful Death of the Classical Record Industry (US title: The Life and Death of Classical Music, Penguin, 2007) is billed as an inside account of the rise and fall of recording, combined with a critical selection and analysis of 100 albums and 20 recording disasters.

Lebrecht has written extensively about the composer Gustav Mahler, including in his books Mahler Remembered (Faber & Faber, 1987) and Why Mahler?: How One Man and Ten Symphonies Changed Our World (Anchor Books, 2010). His interest in contemporary music is reflected in The Complete Companion to 20th Century Music (Simon & Schuster, 2000) and in the Phaidon Press series of 20th-century composer biographies, of which he was founder and editor. Other books on music he has written include Discord: Conflict and the Making of Music (A. Deutsch, 1982), The Book of Musical Anecdotes (Simon and Schuster, 1985), Music in London (Aurum Press, 1992), and Covent Garden: The Untold Story: Dispatches from the English Culture War, 1945–2000 (UPNE, 2000).

Novels

His career as a novelist began with The Song of Names (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group), a tale of two boys growing up in wartime London and the impact of the Holocaust. It was published in 2001, and went on to win the 2002 Whitbread Award for First Novel. Lebrecht won the award at the age of 54. His second novel, The Game of Opposites: A Novel (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group), was published in 2009 in the US.