Norman Lebrecht
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 Photo: Abigail Lebrecht |
Norman Lebrecht (born 11 July 1948 in London) is a British commentator on music and cultural affairs and also a novelist. He has been Assistant Editor of the Evening Standard since 2002 and has presented lebrecht.live on BBC Radio 3 from 2000 to the present. Before working for the Standard, he wrote for the Daily Telegraph.
The Maestro Myth (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 (US title: Who Killed Classical Music, 1997) is the first documented history of the classical music business, examining its backstage workings and foretelling the collapse of the record industry. Maestros, Masterpieces and Madness (US title: The Life and Death of Classical Music, 2007) is an inside account of the rise and fall of recording, combined with a critical selection and analysis of 100 cornerstone discs and 20 recording disasters.
Lebrecht has written extensively about the composer Gustav Mahler, in Mahler Remembered (1987) and elsewhere; and about contemporary music, in The Complete Companion to 20th Century Music (2000). He is the founder and editor of the Phaidon series of 20th century composer biographies.
His novel The Song of Names, a tale of two boys growing up in wartime London, appeared in 2001 and went on to win the prestigious 2002 Whitbread Awards for First Novel.
Other books include The Book of Musical Anecdotes (1985), Music in London (1992), Covent Garden: The Untold Story (2000).
His weekly newspaper and web column is sporadically attacked as provocative and misinformed, but Lebrecht’s predictions on the decline of the classical music industry have been generally vindicated and several of his books are international bestsellers, translated into 16 languages.
