Priest of Music

Impeccably researched and written with a novelist's narrative mastery, this biography of the great conductor is a modern tragedy. Mitropoulos was a passionate advocate of difficult modern music and an early champion of Mahler; his emotionally charged performances brought the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra into the first rank of American orchestras. Generous and self-effacing, he was an innocent in the game of musical politics, unprepared for the intrigues and treachery in store when he became music director of the New York Philharmonic, "the orchestra that took no prisoners."