Volume 47, Number 1 · January 20, 2000
The Drama Inside the Concerto
By Charles Rosen
Concerto Conversations
by Joseph Kerman
Harvard University Press, 175 pp., $24.95
Joseph Kerman's book on the concerto is too short, but it is otherwise splendid, entertaining, original, and often profound. Its excellence is partially disguised by a resolute assumption of modesty. It is also occasionally marred by a style that assumes the all-too-easy, popular approach of a freshman music course. For the most part, however, Kerman speaks directly and informally to a literate and educated public deeply interested in music. These six lectures (the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures of 1997-1998) are characterized by their dissatisfaction with the usual categories of both academic and popular writing about the concerto, although Kerman is always courteous and even grandly generous to his predecessors. His affable manner sometimes makes his approach to the subject seem obvious, the result of common sense, even when it is most innovative.
Review, 3531 words
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