Ten men went to mow

Sitting at Stamford Bridge at the weekend, Chelsea trailing Bolton 0-1, I reflected on the nature of 11 brilliant players and their manager. After Mourinho’s half-time talk, Chelsea scored four goals in 10 minutes. There are inspiring and uninspiring gaffers. If he were a conductor, José Mourinho would be a virtuoso, but what does this imply? Passion, charisma, sensitivity, psychological insight and a spiritual dimension are all vital, but perhaps Otto Klemperer, one of the subjects of this impressive book, succeeded in subsuming all this into a simple phrase, ‘the power of suggestion’, in a 1969 interview: ‘The art of conducting lies, in my opinion, in the power of suggestion that the conductor exerts — on the audience as well as on the orchestra.’

The book comprises chapters on nine conductors plus an introduction on the way Wagner influenced their art, making it in effect ten. Holden’s choice, three of them famous composers, might seem arbitrary (the absence of Toscanini), but is fully justified by his subtitle, ‘The Central European Tradition from Wagner to Karajan’.