Author: Wolf Wondratschek
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374720274
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 135
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Book Description
A legendary literary figure who initiated a one-man Beat Generation in his native Germany, Wolf Wondratschek “is eccentric, monomaniacal, romantic—his texts are imbued with a wonderful, reckless nonchalance.”* Now, he tells a story of a man looking back on his life in an honest Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man. Vienna is an uncanny, magical, and sometimes brutally alienating city. The past lives on in the cafes where lost souls come to kill time and hash over the bygone glories of the twentieth century—or maybe just a recent love affair. Here, in one of these cafes, an anonymous narrator meets a strange character, “like someone out of a novel”: a decrepit old Russian named Suvorin. A Soviet pianist of international renown, Suvorin committed career suicide when he developed a violent distaste for the sound of applause. This eccentric gentleman—sometimes charming, sometimes sulky, sometimes disconcertingly frank—knows the end of his life is approaching, and allows himself to be convinced to tell his life story. Over a series of coffee dates, punctuated by confessions, anecdotes, and rages—and by the narrator’s schemes to keep his quarry talking—a strained friendship develops between the two men, and it soon becomes difficult to tell who is more dependent on whom. Rhapsodic and melancholic, with shades of Vladimir Nabokov, W. G. Sebald, Hans Keilson, and Thomas Bernhard, Wolf Wondratschek's Self-Portrait with Russian Piano is a literary sonata circling the eternal question of whether beauty, music, and passion are worth the sacrifices some people are compelled to make for them. “A romantic in a madhouse. To let Wondratschek’s voice be drowned in the babble of today’s literature would be a colossal mistake.” —*Patrick Süskind, international bestselling author of Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
Author: Magnus Myst
Publisher: Delacorte Press
ISBN: 0593427645
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 161
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Book Description
In this second book in the Little Bad Book interactive series, young readers will be dared to solve tricky puzzles and funny riddles and to become part of the plot in eerily funny stories in order to reveal the Little Bad Book's secret! HEY, YOU! PSSST You might not believe this, but I’ve discovered the biggest secret in the world. Yes, honestly! Should I tell you? Okay. Just be careful! It will be the scariest thing you’ve ever read! I hope you can take it. Can you?? I bet you can. You’re brave, aren’t you? Do you dare to read me? Come on—do it—read me! You are the lucky reader who can discover the secret the little bad book is willing to share. The puzzles and riddles will challenge you, but it is definitely worth it! Go ahead and take a chance! You are the baddest one there is!
Author: Magnus Myst
Publisher: Delacorte Press
ISBN: 0593427688
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 177
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Book Description
In this third book in the Little Bad Book interactive series, yet another secret is revealed to the reader—and this time it's ancient! Hey, you! Good thing you’re here! See, I need a reader who’s got some guts. And who’s brave and clever and cunning—plus also, ideally, super delicious. Uh, no, not delicious. Forget I said that. Brave and smart, I meant to say. Exactly. Are you brave and smart? And do you want to help me? I promise you this: if you read me, it’ll be the last thing you . . . uh, no, the best time you’ve ever had in your whole life! So how about it? Do you dare read me? If so, here's a hint . . . be sure to pack a Time Travel Emergency Kit. You might just need it!
Author: Magnus Myst
Publisher: Delacorte Press
ISBN: 0593427610
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 129
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Book Description
With tricky puzzles, funny riddles, and eerily funny stories, this interactive middle grade book allows the reader to become a part of the plot! This is all about YOU—yes, I am talking to YOU. Your help is needed. Act NOW! Pick up and start this book no matter what else you are doing. Don’t be a goody-goody and wait for the right time—the right time is this minute! Come on, do it! Make a decision! Who cares what the adults or others say? You can start by helping me be bad—even evil! Yah, YOU! But don’t worry, because we won’t get punished—no, we’ll have fun! Guaranteed FUN. This Little Bad Book you have discovered has dreams and aspirations, but it needs help from YOU, the reader. You will find eerily funny stories packed with challenging puzzles and riddles and fantastic drawings and images. Only you, the reader, can help this little bad book get what you both want—a surprisingly terrific time together. Get started! It’s up to you, and you can do it!
Author: Christopher J. Barnes
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 264
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Book Description
An insight into the views on technique and interpretation of several of the twentieth century's greatest Russian teachers and performers.
Author: Peter Leek
Publisher: Parkstone International
ISBN: 1780429754
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
From the 18th century to the 20th, this book gives a panorama of Russian painting not equalled anywhere else. Russian culture developed in contact with the wider European influence, but retained strong native intonations. It is a culture between East and West, and both influences in together. The book begins with Icons, and it is precisely Icon-painting which gave Russian artist their peculiar preoccupation with ethical questions and a certain kind of palette. It goes on the expound the duality of their art, and point out the originality of their contribution to world art. The illustrations cover all genres and styles of painting in astonishing variety. Such figures as Borovokovsky, Rokotov, Levitsky, Brullov, Fedatov, Repin, Shishkin and Levitan and many more are in these pages.
Author: Valeria Tsenova
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134371659
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 284
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Book Description
What happened to contemporary music in the Soviet Union after Stravinsky, Shostakovich and Prokofiev? This book is a valuable source of information on the composers of the generations following these three great innovators. It is a document of the hidden period of Russian music, of what happened after the denunciation of Shostakovich and Prokofiev by the Composers' Union. It contains profiles of the most interesting and innovative composers from Russia and the former Soviet republics, written by leading musicologists. Featured composers include Andrei Volkonsky, Philip Gershkovich, Sergei Slonimsky, Boris Tishchenko, Valentin Silvestrov, Leonid Grabovsky , Nikolai Karetnikov , Alemdar Karamanov, Roman Ledenyov , Vyacheslav Artyomov , Faraj Karayev , Alexander Knaifel , Vladislav Shoot Alexander Vustin, Victor Ekimovksy , Alexander Raskatov , Sergei Pavlenko, Vladimir Tarnopolsy.
Author: Malcolm Gillies
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780199719419
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 342
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Book Description
Shortly before his death, Percy Grainger (1882-1961) lodged over twenty unpublished sketches in his Australian Museum. Self-Portrait of Percy Grainger draws exclusively from these sketches, revealing for the first time an illuminating portrait of the composer's life. With such titles as "The Aldridge-Grainger-Strom Saga," "Thunks," "Ere-I-Forget," "The Love-Life of Helen and Paris," and "Anecdotes," these manuscripts were intended as precursors to Grainger's autobiography, My Wretched Tone-Life, which he only commenced in his final years. Expertly shaping these sketches, the editors have created a "self-portrait" along the lines that Grainger himself had intended. The volume first introduces Grainger's forebears, parents, friends, wife, and himself before moving on to his views on composition, performance, and the musical world. In these sketches, Grainger addresses such topics as racial and national identity, the meaning of work, physical culture, language reform, sexual practice, and artistic patronage. Grainger also probes the nature of musical genius, discussing a broad range of composers including Igor Stravinsky, Thomas Beecham, Frederick Delius, Edvard Grieg, Charles Stanford, Cyril Scott, Fritz Kreisler, Donald Tovey, Ferruccio Busoni, and Balfour Gardiner. Among the works of his own that Grainger most featured are his The Warriors --Music for an Imaginary Ballet, Colonial Song, the Lincolnshire Posy series of band pieces, his greatest "hit" Country Gardens, and his many settings of English folk-music. Written in Grainger's own self-created "Nordic English" as well as translated from Danish, the language of his most intimate confessions, Self-Portrait of Percy Grainger sheds light on some of the most revealing details of the composer's life. The sketches trace Grainger's changing self-perception, from the romantically tinged, even lustful, views of his forties and fifties, through a period of wistfulness in his sixties, to the bitterness and self-loathing of his old age. The volume also includes several of Grainger's own drawings as well as both public and private photographs. A fascinating and revealing collection of vignettes, this extraordinary book will appeal to instructors, students, and enthusiasts in musicology, music history, cultural studies, and Australian, British, and American history.
Author: Heberto Padilla
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0374526559
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 258
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Book Description
The autobiography of Cuba's finest poet, whose condemnation by the Castro regime became a cause celebre. "Intellectuals alienated from the Castro government who have told their stories tend to sound spiteful and illiberal, like Cabrera Infante; Padilla takes pains to do better. His style is clear, sometimes witty, often bitter, persevering but not burdensome, and evincing an occasional affinity with both Orwell and Hemingway." - Publishers Weekly
Author: Isabel W?nsche
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351541773
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 515
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Book Description
The artists of the Organic School of the Russian avant-garde found inspiration as well as a model for artistic growth in the creative principles of nature. Isabel W?nsche analyzes the artistic influences, intellectual foundations, and scientific publications that shaped the formation of these artists, the majority of whom were based in St. Petersburg. Particular emphasis is given to the holistic worldviews and organic approaches prevalent among artists of the pre-revolutionary avant-garde, specifically Jan Ciaglinski, Nikolai Kulbin, and Elena Guro, as well as the emergence of the concept of Organic Culture as developed by Mikhail Matiushin, practiced at the State Institute of Artistic Culture, and taught at the reformed Art Academy in the 1920s. Discussions of faktura and creative intuition explore the biocentric approaches that dominated the work of Pavel Filonov, Kazimir Malevich, Voldemar Matvejs, Olga Rozanova, and Vladimir Tatlin. The artistic approaches of the Organic School of the Russian avant-garde were further promoted and developed by Vladimir Sterligov and his followers between 1960 and 1990. The study examines the cultural potential as well as the utopian dimension of the artists? approaches to creativity and their ambitious visions for the role of art in promoting human psychophysiological development and shaping post-revolutionary culture.
