Richard Wagner: A Life In MusicBy Martin Geck(University of Chicago Press, 423 pages, $35) THE JUNE 1980 issue of Esquire asked rhetorically…

Diaries 1924-1933: The Prodigal SonSerge Prokofiev, translated and annotated by Anthony Phillips(Cornell University Press, 1,125 pages, $60) Lina and Serge: The…

Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth CenturyBy Paul Kildea(Allen Lane, 665 pages, $45) THANKS TO THE CENTENARY of his…

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously wrote that the best test of truth “is the power of the thought to get…