Awards,
Music Book Publications of the Year - Finalists 2024
In anticipation of our upcoming Presto Music Awards, we have released our shortlist of music books which are all in contention for an award. We have selected a total of ten finalists, and all publications have been published at some point over the past twelve months. Find our choices below, and be sure to check out the finalists from the jazz, sheet music, and classical departments - the winners will be revealed after our awards ceremony on Thursday 5th December.
Music Book Publications of the Year - Finalists 2024
Part biography, part memoir, part travelogue, this book draws on Suchet's own life and career as a foreign correspondent and news anchor to show how Beethoven’s music has accompanied him through the best and worst of times. He traces Beethoven’s footsteps from his early years in Bonn to his dying days in Vienna, taking us on a journey both literal and symbolic, as he uses his own experience as a Beethoven aficionado to demonstrate the life-changing power of great music.
Available Format: Book
In 1969, decades before he was chosen to conduct the music at the Coronation of King Charles, Antonio Pappano was a ten-year-old boy accompanying his father's singing lessons. This memoir tells the moving tale of a conductor who, nurtured in childhood by his parents and their dedicated work ethic, went on to conduct at many of the most influential opera houses of the world. Pappano skilfully evokes an extensive selection from his wide-ranging repertoire and makes a compelling case for the potential classical music has to captivate new and wider audiences.
Available Format: Book
Tchaikovsky's Empire: A New Life of Russia's Greatest Composer
Simon Morrison; Yale University Press; Hardback
Often portrayed as a hopeless romantic, a suffering melancholic, or a morbid obsessive, the Tchaikovsky we think we know is a shadow of the fascinating reality. This iconoclastic biography re-examines the relationship between his music, personal life, and politics, his support of Tsars Alexander II and III, and his engagement with the cultures of the imperial margins, giving us a vivid new appreciation of Russia’s most popular composer.
Available Format: Book
This biography offers fresh perspectives on the life, ideas and music of composer, organist and ornithologist Olivier Messiaen. Drawing on previously unexplored sketches and archival material, it seamlessly combines elements of biography, musicology, theology, philosophy, psychoanalysis and aesthetics to present a nuanced perspective on Messiaen’s work. Unlike previous biographies, it also considers the perspectives of Messiaen’s contemporaries and students, providing a comprehensive understanding of his life and artistic legacy.
Available Format: Book
This absorbing, wide-ranging and incisive biography unfolds the life and work of Sergei Prokofiev, revealing a surprisingly optimistic spirit amidst a tumultuous backdrop of geopolitical chaos and ever-shifting musical landscapes. The narrative weaves through Prokofiev's intricate existence, depicting a life coloured by pathos and intersecting with a myriad of characters.
Available Format: Book
Women are an essential part of the history of the piano - but how many women pianists can you name? Susan Tomes traces fifty women across the piano’s history, from Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn to more overlooked women such as Hélène de Montgeroult, Leopoldine Wittgenstein, and Hazel Scott. Including interviews with women performing today, this is a much-needed corrective to our understanding of the piano.
Available Format: Book
One of the late twentieth century’s most celebrated and influential public intellectuals, Edward W. Said was also a critic of astonishing range. This book presents his insightful and elegant analyses of four major operas, originally delivered as the Empson Lectures at Cambridge University in 1997. In close readings of Mozart’s Così fan tutte, Beethoven’s Fidelio, Berlioz’s Les Troyens, and Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Said explores how each opera engages with the social and political questions of their own eras, and how they might speak to the present.
Available Format: Book
Fate & The Excursions of Mr Brouček: Janáček's operas of hope and disappointment
Jiří Zahrádka; Moravian Museum, Brno; Hardback
This book looks at two remarkable yet neglected operas - Janáček’s Osud and The Excursions of Mr Brouček. It describes their difficult compositional process using a wealth of sources revealing the composer’s inspirations, the themes he considered for operas, his often fraught dealings with writers, the encounters with music which opened Janáček’s eyes, and also his coming to terms with the loss of his beloved daughter, Olga.
Available Format: Book
Der Ring des Nibelungen is one of the most epic and compelling stories of the nineteenth century. But the story of how Wagner created the work is one full of intrigue, triumphs, and controversy. This book combines cultural history and biography to offer an insightful introduction to The Ring and its mythology, telling the story of how and why this extraordinary masterpiece came into being, why it takes the form it does, why it fascinates and obsesses so many and horrifies others, and why it matters.
Available Format: Book
Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song
Judith Tick; WW Norton & Co; Hardback
This first major biography since Ella Fitzgerald's death draws on archival research, family interviews and newly-available recordings and footage to show how she fused a Black vocal aesthetic with mainstream repertoire to revolutionise American music. From Fitzgerald’s first audition at the Apollo Theatre to swing-era success at the Savoy, it shows how this “girl singer” broke new ground: as a female bandleader, a groundbreaking improviser, and the arbiter of the American canon with her Song Book recordings.
Available Format: Book
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