Music as alchemy: journeys with great conductors and their orchestras, paperback/tom service

How are conductors silent gestures magicked into sound by a group of more than a hundred brilliant, but belligerent musicians? The mute choreography of great conductors has fascinated and frustrated musicians and music-lovers for centuries.

Orchestras can be inspired to the heights of musical and expressive possibility by their maestros, or flabbergasted that someone who doesnt even make a sound should be elevated to demigod-like status by the public.

This is the first book to go inside the rehearsal rooms of some of the most inspirational orchestral partnerships in the world - how Simon Rattle works at the Berlin Philharmonic, how Mariss Jansons deals with the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, and how Claudio Abbado creates the worlds most luxurious pick-up band every year with the Lucerne Festival Orchestra.

From London to Budapest, Bamberg to Vienna, great orchestral concerts are recreated as a collection of countless human and musical stories.