428 pages | 6 x 9 | Memoir/Music
ISBN: 979-888-855-0052
Hardback $34.99
Coming Summer 2024
IDIL BIRET
Life & Music: A Memoir
Publication date: August 2024
Shipping date: Fall 2024
Idil Biret’s memoir is an important historical record of this extraordinary Turkish pianist prodigy who began playing at the age of three. At eight she commenced study at the Paris Conservatoire under the guidance of Nadia Boulanger. At sixteen she appeared with major orchestras in the principal music centers of the world―the Boston Symphony, Leningrad Philharmonic, Leipzig Gewandhaus, London Symphony and Warsaw Philharmonic.
Her moving prose reveals a consummate musician who is intellectually brilliant, humanely sensitive, and spiritually inquisitive. Certainly one of the most gifted pianists of this century or the last, her memoir will be a deep pleasure for lovers of memoir and music alike.
“Idil Biret was a pupil and protégée of three of the greatest musicians of the last century, Wilhelm Kempff, Alfred Cortot, and Nadia Boulanger. Her legacy of recordings is worthy of her heritage. She ranges more widely than most contemporary pianists, and her recordings also include the complete piano sonatas of Pierre Boulez; Liszt’s transcriptions of the Beethoven symphonies and Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique; two Saint-Saens piano concertos; and an album of music about childhood by Schumann, Debussy, and Tchaikovsky. Her 12-CD Brahms set is the finest complete version ever recorded; her complete Rachmaninoff is also unsurpassed for aristocratic, passionate pianism and exacting musicianship.”
“Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life..."
— Berthold Auerbach