Harvey Sachs, (born Cleveland, Ohio, June 8, 1946) is an American-

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

-Swiss writer who has written books on musical subjects.

Writing

His books include biographies of and a book of

essay An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal a ...

s on the

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

conductor Arturo Toscanini, plus an edited collection of Toscanini's letters. * ''Toscanini'', Philadelphia & New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1978. * ''Reflections on Toscanini'', New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991. * ''The Letters of Arturo Toscanini'', ed., New York:

Knopf Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. () is an American publishing house that was founded by Alfred A. Knopf Sr. and Blanche Knopf in 1915. Blanche and Alfred traveled abroad regularly and were known for publishing European, Asian, and Latin American writers in ...

, 2002. * ''Toscanini: Musician of Conscience'', New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2017. One of his most recent books, ''Ten Masterpieces of Music'', deals with works in ten different genres by ten different composers: Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Berlioz, Verdi, Brahms, Sibelius, Prokofiev, and Stravinsky; it provides descriptive analyses of the ten compositions plus commentary on and historical background to the life of each composer (''Ten Masterpieces of Music'', New York: Liveright, 2021). Sachs has also written books on musical virtuosi, a history of music in Italy during the fascist period, a biography of Arthur Rubinstein, and a book on Beethoven's Ninth Symphony that is part cultural history, part musical description, and part personal memoir: * ''Virtuoso'', London, New York: Thames & Hudson, 1982. * ''Music in Fascist Italy'', New York: W. W. Norton, 1988. * ''Rubinstein: A Life'', New York: Grove Press, 1995. * ''The Ninth: Beethoven and the World in 1824'', New York:

Random House Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...

, 2010. * ''Ten Masterpieces of Music'', New York: Liveright, 2021 He has written ''Schoenberg: Why He Matters'', an interpretive biography, which will be published by Liveright, New York, in 2023. Sachs also co-authored the

memoir A memoir (; , ) is any nonfiction narrative writing based in the author's personal memories. The assertions made in the work are thus understood to be factual. While memoir has historically been defined as a subcategory of biography or autobiog ...

s of

Plácido Domingo José Plácido Domingo Embil (born 21 January 1941) is a Spanish opera singer, conductor, and arts administrator. He has recorded over a hundred complete operas and is well known for his versatility, regularly performing in Italian, French ...

and

Sir Georg Solti Sir Georg Solti ( , ; born György Stern; 21 October 1912 – 5 September 1997) was a Hungarian-British orchestral and operatic conductor, known for his appearances with opera companies in Munich, Frankfurt and London, and as a long-servin ...

: * Domingo, Plácido, ''My First Forty Years'', New York: Knopf, 1983. * Solti, Georg, ''Memoirs'', New York: Knopf, 1997. Sachs has written pieces for

periodical A periodical literature (also called a periodical publication or simply a periodical) is a published work that appears in a new edition on a regular schedule. The most familiar example is a newspaper, but a magazine or a journal are also example ...

s that include ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

,'' ''

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,'' the ''

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'', the ''Times ondonLiterary Supplement,'' ''Il Sole 24 Ore,'' and ''La Stampa''; and record companies that include

Deutsche Grammophon Deutsche Grammophon (; DGG) is a German classical music record label that was the precursor of the corporation PolyGram. Headquartered in Berlin Friedrichshain, it is now part of Universal Music Group (UMG) since its merger with the UMG family of ...

and

RCA The RCA Corporation was a major American electronics company, which was founded as the Radio Corporation of America in 1919. It was initially a patent trust owned by General Electric (GE), Westinghouse, AT&T Corporation and United Fruit Comp ...

/ Sony Classics.

Work and family

Sachs is on the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. From 2011 to 2013 he was the Leonard Bernstein Scholar-in-Residence of the New York Philharmonic. As a young man he worked as a conductor, mainly in Canada, where he lived in his twenties. He then lived in Europe for more than 30 years, mostly in Italy but also in England and Switzerland. From 2004 to 2006 he was Artistic Director of the Societa' del Quartetto di Milano, Italy's oldest extant concert society. He has been married twice and has two children - Julian Sachs (b. 1984), an administrator at New York University's Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimo'; and Lyuba Sachs (b. 1998), a student at the Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan. His partner, pianist Eve Wolf, is the founder and executive artistic director of the New York-based Ensemble for the Romantic Century. Sachs has lived in New York City since 2006.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sachs, Harvey 1946 births Living people Writers from Cleveland