This book, which is overflowing with love for art and for life, obviously has a lot to say about music: the celebrated conductor and composer offers readers impassioned and precise pages about rehearsing an orchestra, and how the ideal society that an orchestra represents actually works, as well about the pieces and musicians that have meant the most to him– Xenakis, Boulez, Markevitch, Karajan and others. The book also has philosophical and aesthetic musings that shed new light on the musician’s approach. And finally, personal anecdotes, told with the intelligence and lucidity he is known for, and which are inevitably marked by the terrible affair that affected his life so deeply.

A private, wise, tragic, moving and often funny confession from the profoundly humanist Tabachnik, who offers up an ode to life and its mysteries, that for him, only music is capable of expressing fully.

A very personal book about music, the musician’s life, and life per se, by one of the great musicians of our times.