Book cover of Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs, and Classical Music

Book description

In the tradition of Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential and Gelsey Kirkland’s Dancing on My Grave, Mozart in the Jungle delves into the lives of the musicians and conductors who inhabit the insular world of classical music. In a book that inspired the Amazon Original series starring Gael García Bernal and…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Mozart in the Jungle as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I suspect I’ll raise a few eyebrows with this recommendation, notwithstanding the Amazon series it spawned (which ran for four seasons).

The book was not uniformly applauded, and it is difficult to know how accurate certain details are, given Tindall’s use of more than thirty pseudonyms and numerous denials from people she named. However, the prevalence of sex, drugs, and power politics in classical music is a harsh, ugly fact.

Classical musicians often misbehave, and if even those struggling for orchestral positions are guilty, how much worse might it be with the superstars? Obviously, I am thinking about Niccolò Paganini,…

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These Blue Mountains by Sarah Loudin Thomas,

A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.

German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…

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