Maestros and Their Music: The Art and Alchemy of Conducting

An exuberant, uniquely accessible, beautifully illustrated look inside the enigmatic art & craft of conducting, from a celebrated conductor whose international career has spanned half a century.

John Mauceri brings a lifetime of experience to bear in an unprecedented, hugely informative, consistently entertaining exploration of his profession, rich with anecdotes from decades of working alongside the greatest names of the music world. With candor & humor, Mauceri makes clear that conducting is itself a composition: of legacy & tradition, techniques handed down from master to apprentice–and more than a trace of ineffable magic. 

He reveals how conductors approach a piece of music (a calculated combination of personal interpretation, imagination, & insight into the composer’s intent); what it takes to communicate solely through gesture, with sometimes hundreds of performers at once; & the occasionally glamorous, often challenging life of the itinerant maestro. 

Mauceri, who worked closely with Leonard Bernstein for 18 years, studied with Leopold Stokowski, & was on the faculty of Yale University for fifteen years, is the perfect guide to the allure & theater, passion & drudgery, rivalries & relationships of the conducting life.

John Mauceri, world-renowned conductor, writer, educator, & producer, has appeared with the world’s greatest opera companies (the Teatro alla Scala, the Royal Opera at Covent Garden, the Deutsche Oper Berlin, & the Metropolitan Opera, among others) & symphony orchestras (the NY Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Orchestre Nationale de France, the Tokyo Philharmonic, the Israel Philharmonic, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, & all the major London orchestras) as well as on the musical stages of Broadway & Hollywood. He served as direttore stabile of the Teatro Regio in Turin & music director of the Scottish Opera,...