Splendid Encounters

 

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Abraham Kaplan’s memoir, Splendid Enouncters, recounts his experiences working with many of the most celebrated musicians of the twentieth century.

 

From world premieres with Leonard Bernstein to a once-in-a-lifetime collaboration with Frank Sinatra at Madison Square Garden, Splendid Encounters offers a glimpse into two of the century’s most exciting decades of classical music. These stories of great musicians, as told by a a great musician and storyteller, are both infectious and inspirational, demonstrating that less legendary musicians are indeed real human beings. This memoir revives the living, breathing experiences of a generation of musical legends.

 

Among the individuals about whom Kaplan regales are:

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Composers: Leonard Bernstein, Ernest Bloch, Aaron Copland, Lukas Foss, Gershon Kingsley, Zoltán Kodály, Darius Milhaud, Vincent Persichetti, William Schuman, Robert Starer, Igor Stravinsky, Randall Thompson

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Conductors: Claudio Abbado, Pierre Boulez, Carlo Maria Giulini, Shlomo Kaplan, Josef Krips, Raphael Kubelik, Erich Leinsdorf, Sir Neville Marriner, Zubin Mehta, Charles Munch, Seiji Ozawa, Thomas Schippers, Gerard Schwarz, Sir Georg Solti, William Steinberg, Leopold Stokowski, George Szell, Alfred Wallenstein

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Singers: Marian Anderson, Martina Arroyo, Jan Peerce, Hans Rehfuss, Beverly Sills, Frank Sinatra

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Others: opera administrator Kurt Adler, lutenist Suzanne Bloch, radio personality Karl Haas, bandleader Skitch Henderson, vocal coach Madeline Marshall, cellist Frank Miller, violinist Joseph Szigeti

 

Also includes Kaplan’s short essay, “What Does a Conductor (Maestro) Do... And Who the Hell Needs Him?”

 

Published in 2009 by iUniverse