Old Friends and New Music

by Nicolas Nabokov

294 pages, Hardcover

Reviews

[Neil · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this autobiography - actually more like an autobiography with biography; there are some extraordinary glimpses into the lives of key twentieth century figures: Nijinsky, Diaghilev and his entourage, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Stravinsky, Koussevitsky. Nabokov writes with great facility and knows that old Hollywood imperative only too well - Make em laugh, make em cry!
The first meeting with Stravinsky in California when he goes to visit the Stravinsky family is beautifully and amusingly observed: "They were dressed in breakfast clothes- she in an impeccably white negligee, which made her look large and stately, he in a polka-dotted burgundy bathrobe, with the striking addition of a narrow-brimmed, wilted, black felt hat." Not how I imagined the composer of 'The Rite of Spring' and The Firefird'!
Nabokov's 'tour gastronomique' with Prokofiev and his family was often laugh-out-loud for me - the endless food, the 'abominable driving' and the continual squabbles afford a real insight into the character of a man who called visits to chateaux, cathedrals and museums a 'phony gravedigging ritual'.
From his childhood in pre-revolutionary Russia to his involvement in the artistic administration of post-war Berlin, Nabokov was ever the perfect Reithian in his writing - informing, educating and entertaining.

[Earl · Rating 4 out of 5]

A man from a vanished era remembers an era even further removed from our own rotten reality.