Includes indexes.

pt. I. The eighties. The music itself : Glenn Gould's contrapuntal vision ; Remembrance of things played : presence and memory in the pianist's art ; Pomp and circumstance (on musical festivals) ; On Richard Strauss ; Die Walküre, Aida, X ; Music and feminism ; Maestro for the masses (review of Understanding Toscanini) ; Middle age and performers ; The Vienna Philharmonic : the complete Beethoven symphonies and concertos ; The Barber of Seville, Don Giovanni ; Glenn Gould at the Metropolitan Museum ; Giulio Cesare ; Bluebeard's Castle, Erwartung ; Extreme occasions (on Celibidache) ; Peter Sellars's Mozart ; András Schiff at Carnegie Hall -- pt. II. The nineties. Richard Strauss ; Wagner and the Met's Ring ; Opera productions (Der Rosenkavalier, House of the dead, Doctor Faust) ; Style and stylessness (Elektra, Semiramide, Katya Kabanova) ; Alfred Brendel : words for music (review of Alfred Brendel's Music sounded out: essays, lectures, interviews, afterthoughts) ; Die tote Stadt, Fidelio, The death of Klinghoffer ; Uncertainties of style (The ghosts of Versailles, Die Soldaten) ; Musical retrospection ; The bard festival ; The importance of being unfaithful to Wagner ; Music as gesture (on Solti) ; Les troyens ; Child's play (review of Maynard Solomon's Mozart: a life) ; 32 short films about Glenn Gould ; Bach's genius, Schumann's eccentricity, Chopin's ruthlessness, Rosen's gift (review of Charles Rosen's The romantic generation) ; Why listen to Boulez? ; Hindemith and Mozart ; Review of Michael Tanner's Wagner ; In the chair (review of Peter Ostwald's Glenn Gould and the tragedy of genius) ; On Fidelio ; Music and spectacle (La cenerentola and The rake's progress) ; Review of Gottfried Wagner's He who does not howl with the wolf : The Wagner legacy: an autobiography ; Bach for the masses -- pt. III. 2000 and beyond. Daniel Barenboim (bonding across cultural boundaries) ; Glenn Gould, the virtuoso as intellectual ; Cosmic ambition (review of Christoph Wolff's Johann Sebastian Bach: the learned musician) ; Barenboim and the Wagner taboo ; Untimely meditations (review of Maynard Solomon's Late Beethoven).