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Kirkus Book Review

Based on an eight-part Canadian TV series: a big, mostly bland, sometimes highly idiosyncratic chronological survey (""not intended to serve as an exhaustive history book of music"")--with lots of pictures, serviceable basic text by Davis, and interwoven Menuhin musings and opinions (which range from pompous to quirky to illuminating). Menuhin's mystical bent certainly makes the first 50 pages hard to take--music's essence and beginnings, complete with whole-earth platitudes and a romantic anti-Western bias--but once harmony arrives, the centuries pass by efficiently, and Menuhin's personal passions become more focused and more engaging. Purcell is an early-music favorite (for ""his unconventional mind and his freedom of phrasing""), also Mozart (""Enesco, my teacher, likened Mozart's music to smiling vineyards on the slopes of an active volcano""), and Bach above all--epic, universal. . . and frugal to a fault. (""At the end of one colossal piece he begins the next on the same page."") True, Menuhin's prejudices do sometimes produce odd perspectives and proportions: violinist Paganini and Menuhin's teacher Enesco receive far more coverage than Handel; the Romantic Revolution (""egocentric, personal self-realization"") and the emergence of the symphony orchestra are viewed mostly as negative developments; Beethoven and Schubert are balanced in an overdrawn dichotomy; Mahler and Strauss are dismissed as ""the loud echo of this self-confident age of colonial empire""; Bartok is seen as having more to say to us today than Beethoven and Brahms. And Menuhin's sketchy attempt to cover popular music as well (a simplistic assault on the Rolling Stones, no mention of the great U.S. pop songs) is a major mistake. Hardly a reliable or balanced introduction/reference, then, but relatively wary readers will be able to extract the plums here (like a grand conversation between Menuhin and Aaron Copland) and give the right sort of consideration to Menuhin's fervent praises and put-downs. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.