By Raymond Holden The Virtuoso Conductors: The Central European Tradition from Wagner to Karajan

This has to be one of the dullest books on conductors ever written. Raymond Holden starts with an idiosyncratic selection which means that many "virtuoso" conductors are omitted (Toscanini, Reiner, Szell, Maazel) and only those in a direct line from Wagner are included (this includes Karajan, but not Solti). Then each chapter consists mostly of a numbing repetition of how many times this conductor or that performed Beethoven or Brahms or Wagner, intermixed with the kind of biographical detail you might pick up in many other more interesting places. Nowhere is there any analysis of what it was that made each conductor special, what their technique was, in short, how they worked their magic on their orchestras. Best avoided.