Gustav Kobbé - Loves of Great Composers

Gustav Kobbe was a German/US music critic who worked at the time of Liszt and Wagner in particular, and was clearly in the Wagnerian rather than the Brahms camp. His unusual style of writing and his strongly romantic take on the loves of these seven composers makes for entertaining listening, even though his facts and opinions may differ from more academic writers and biographers of these composers. Each composer occupies a section or chapter, with Wagner getting the fuller account in terms of length. In fact Gustav Kobbe claims he knew Liszt and Wagner as well as Cosima Wagner — so this must be quite original and authoritative. The 19C period and its atmosphere is conveyed by Kobbe's unusual sentence construction and reads more like story telling rather than a written work. ( Peter Thomlinson)