Tempo Rubato

Description

Born in Moncton, New Brunswick, orchestral violinist, sometime chamber music player, sometime musicologist, Warwick Lister looks back in this absorbing memoir on a long international career in which disappointments and failures loom as large as successes.

Lister takes us from his idyllic childhood summers in Nova Scotia, through his musical training and early professional career, orchestral and academic positions on both sides of the Atlantic, before settling in Florence, Italy, where he played in the orchestra of the Maggio Musicale for eighteen years, was first violinist of the Quartetto Musica Ricercata, and, among other projects, wrote an acclaimed biography of the great violinist-composer G. B. Viotti (1755?1824).

But Lister is not reticent about his regrets and disappointments?his failure to obtain a leader (concertmaster) post despite several attempts, his star-crossed professional string quartet career, and even his obsessive attempts (?tempo rubato?) to become a good tennis player.

In sum, the reader will find in these pages a much more intimate and representative glimpse into the life of a ?normal? musician, a rank-and-filer, than in the autobiography of a celebrity.