Arts+ Selects
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
ADAM ZAMOYSKI
Rites of Peace
If you could choose to be a fly on the wall at any event in history, you could do worse than to pick the ball that inaugurated the Congress of Vienna, on October 2, 1814. Adam Zamoyski’s fascinating new book “Rites of Peace” (HarperCollins, 634 pages, $29.95) is a history of the spectacle as well as the substance of the Congress, whose guests included Emperor Francis of Austria, King Frederick William of Prussia, Tsar Alexander of Russia, Metternich, Hardenberg, Talleyrand, and Castlereagh, and dozens of lesser kings, princes, and grand dukes. Combining impressive scholarship and a gift for narrative, Mr. Zamoyski unravels the tangle of motives to show just what was at stake for each participant in the Congress. Mr. Zamoyski expertly leads the reader through this complicated diplomatic dance, which began well before the Congress formally opened. At the same time, he devotes plenty of space to the holiday side of the Congress. The diplomats at Vienna were in charge of the destiny of nations, but they were not public servants, as are the appointees of a democratic, or even a communist, government. They were aristocrats, always willing to combine business with the most florid and exotic kinds of pleasure. Out of this mixture of luxury and power, Mr. Zamoyski has produced an engrossing book. Anyone who enjoys reading history should read it.
Adam Kirsch, July 17
EUGENE DRUCKER
The Savior
The relation between evil and personal privacy occupies “The Savior” (Simon & Schuster, 208 pages, $23), by Emerson String Quartet violinist Eugene Drucker. Mr. Drucker, an eight-time Grammy winner, has turned to fiction to frame an enduring problem of classical music: What to make of the fact that Nazis spent their evenings listening to Beethoven?
Mr. Drucker’s protagonist, Gottfried Keller is pressed into service by the Nazis, whom he does not admire. Too weak to serve in the Wehrmacht, he plays violin for wounded Germans and eventually for prisoners in a concentration camp. Mr. Drucker writes tellingly about the emotional challenges of performance, but the finest thing in this novel is his imagination of compromise.
Benjamin Lytal, July 17
