cover image Riccardo Muti: An Autobiography: First the Music, Then the Words

Riccardo Muti: An Autobiography: First the Music, Then the Words

Riccardo Muti, trans. from the Italian by Alta L. Rice. Rizzoli Ex Libris, $29.95 (316p) ISBN 978-0-8478-3724-3

In this pieced-together though enjoyable memoir, Italian-born Muti, the music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, recalls receiving at age seven a violin as a Saint Nick’s Day gift from his father, who was a music lover and urged all his children to study music in one form or another. Although uninterested at first in learning to play, Muti picked up the instrument after a few months and discovered the magic that has fostered his lifelong love of music. By the time he was 13, Muti was directing a group of older musicians from his hometown of Molfetta in a caroling competition that his group won. He required such rigorous rehearsals that his group mounted an unsuccessful mutiny; in that moment he discovered his deep conviction that music—no matter how simple—had to be blessed with the utmost precision and played with absolute moral devotion. Muti characterizes the life of the professional musician as a solitary pursuit, like a mission or a sacrifice; in spite of the many people he meets in his travels, the musician is alone in his quest for the ideal interpretation, alone before the score, alone in bringing it from page to orchestra and from orchestra to audience. Although woodenly translated, Muti composes a libretto out of the many moments in his sonorous life, gracefully conducting us on a musical journey from his childhood through his years of composing and conducting in Florence, London, Philadelphia, and Chicago. (Oct.)