This is a book about the artistic credos of five superb musicians. It is literate, well crafted, readable, and holds one’s interest from beginning to end. Arnold Steinhardt (of Guarneri Quartet fame) provides an excellent forward. the author tries to get inside his subjects and describe what makes them the artists they are.
— McClain, American Record Guide, September/October 2000.
From the Back Cover
How do four instrumentalists with strong individual tastes and temperaments manage to forge a distinctive approach to the music they play? This extraordinary book ushers readers into the workshop of one of the world’s most accomplished string quartets. In rich and probing conversations with their longtime friend and musicologist and conductor David Blum, the members of the Guarneri String Quartet, both individually as a group, tell what it is like to play together.
About the Author
David Blum founded New York’s Esterhazy Orchestra and l’Orchestre Symphonique Genevois in Geneva, Switzerland. A frequent contributor to the New Yorker and the New York Times, he wrote The Art of Quartet Playing, also from Cornell, and Casals and the Art of Interpretation.