The Life and Death of Classical Music: Featuring the 100 Best and 20 Worst Recordings Ever Made

In this compulsively readable, fascinating, and provocative guide to classical music, Norman Lebrecht, one of the world’s most widely read cultural commentators tells the story of the rise of the classical recording industry from Caruso’s first notes to the heyday of Bernstein, Glenn Gould, Callas, and von Karajan.

Lebrecht compellingly demonstrates that classical recording has reached its end point–but this is not simply an exposé of decline and fall. It is, for the first time, the fu…