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Walcker, Yann: First Discovery - Music: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (w/CD). This book/CD package uses pictures, music and words to tell the story of Mozart’s life. An accompanying CD includes a narrated version of the story and superb recordings of Mozart’s music. It is written in ‘child-friendly’ language, attractively presented with entertaining illustrations. Young children can read the story themselves or listen to it on the CD. It also includes ‘activity boxes’ suggesting further musical activities for children to enjoy.

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Swafford, Jan: Johannes Brahms: A Biography. Proclaimed the new messiah of Romanticism by Robert Schumann when he was only twenty, Johannes Brahms dedicated himself to a long and extraordinarily productive career. In this book, Jan Swafford sets out to reveal the little-known Brahms, the boy who grew up in mercantile Hamburg and played piano in beer halls among prostitutes and drunken sailors, the fiercely self-protective man who thwarted future biographers by burning papers, scores and notebooks late in his life. Making unprecedented use of the remaining archival material, Swafford offers richly expanded perspectives on Brahms's youth, on his difficult romantic life--particularly his longstanding relationship with Clara Schumann--and on his professional rivalry with Lizst and Wagner. Judicious, compassionate, and full of insight into Brahms's human complexity as well as his music, Johannes Brahms is an indispensable biography. "This brilliant and magisterial book is a very good bet to...become the definitive study of Johannes Brahms."--The Plain Dealer.

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Tunstall, Tricia: Changing Lives: Gustavo Dudamel, El Sistema, and the Transformative Power of Music. NEW! When Gustavo Dudamel, at the age of twenty-eight, ascended the podium at the Hollywood Bowl for his inaugural concert as conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, he immediately captivated the hearts of his audience, just as he had the minds of music critics who designated him a modern-day Leonard Bernstein. In Changing Lives, the maestro's story becomes the entry point to an equally captivating subject: El Sistema, the music education program that nurtured his musical talent, first as a young violinist and then as a budding conductor under the mentorship of its founder, José Antonio Abreu. What began in Venezuela has now reached children in Los Angeles, New York City, Baltimore, and cities around the world. No matter the location, the overarching goal of El Sistema is unwavering: to rescue children from the depredations of poverty through music. Part history, part reportage, this book reveals that arts education can indeed effect positive social change.

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Wolff, Bernhard: Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician. NEW! Although we have heard the music of J. S. Bach in countless performances and recordings, the composer himself still comes across only as an enigmatic figure in a single familiar portrait. As we mark the 250th anniversary of Bach's death, author Christoph Wolff presents a new picture that brings to life this towering figure of the Baroque era. This engaging new biography portrays Bach as the living, breathing, and sometimes imperfect human being that he was, while bringing to bear all the advances of the last half-century of Bach scholarship. Wolff demonstrates the intimate connection between the composer's life and his music, showing how Bach's superb inventiveness pervaded his career as musician, composer, performer, scholar, and teacher. And throughout, we see Bach in the broader context of his time: its institutions, traditions, and influences.

With this highly readable book, Wolff sets a new standard for Bach biography. "A monumental work that must find its way into the library of every musician and every dedicated lover of music." - Isaac Stern. "It's unlikely that anyone will fashion a finer tribute to [Bach's] genius." - Los Angeles Times Book Review. "A magisterial biographical portrait...necessarily learned, but also user-friendly, helpful and entertainingly informative." - Chicago Tribune. "Likely to be the standard one-volume Bach biography for some time to come." - New York Review of Books. "A work of clarity worthy of its subject and his music." - Wall Street Journal. "Undoubtedly the most important Bach biography since Phillipp Spitta's life written over a century ago." - The New Republic. Finalist for the 2001 Pulitzer Prize in Biography.

A landmark biography of Bach on the 250th anniversary of the composer's death, written by the leading Bach scholar of our age.