Quick Take
- Narration: John Burlinson handles Brusilow’s complex anecdotes and musical terminology with authority, maintaining clarity over a demanding 12-hour runtime.
- Themes: Ambition versus loyalty, the conductor’s ego, immigrant resilience in American classical music
- Mood: Candid and anecdote-driven, with real bite beneath the professional polish
- Verdict: A richly detailed insider account of mid-20th-century American orchestral life, best suited to listeners with at least some familiarity with classical music culture.
I finished this one on a wet October afternoon with the volume turned up, which felt right. There is something about hearing a violinist-turned-conductor describe the iron discipline of George Szell’s Cleveland Orchestra that demands decent speakers or good headphones. Anshel Brusilow’s memoir, co-written with Robin Underdahl, is not a gentle book. The title, Shoot the Conductor, tells you what kind of temperature the material operates at from the start.
Brusilow’s life story is extraordinary even by the compressed, talent-dense standards of classical music biography. He was soloing with the Philadelphia Orchestra at sixteen. By his thirties, he was concertmaster under Eugene Ormandy, one of the most powerful conductors in American music. The relationships with Pierre Monteux, George Szell, and Ormandy that structure the memoir are not hagiographic. Brusilow has axes to grind and grinds them with precision. This is what makes the book valuable as a historical document and, at times, complicated as a listening experience.
Szell’s Shadow and Ormandy’s Hand
The Szell chapters are the most compelling in the book. Brusilow’s time as associate concertmaster at the Cleveland Orchestra under Szell produced some of the most vivid anecdotes in classical music memoir literature. One reviewer describes the detail of watching orchestra members walk from their parking spaces to Severance Hall and feeling the weight of Szell’s surveillance even at that distance. That texture of institutional pressure, where an orchestra functioned as an extension of one conductor’s will, is difficult to convey in general history and comes through with unusual immediacy in Brusilow’s firsthand account.
The move to Philadelphia and the relationship with Ormandy is where the memoir gets genuinely complicated. Ormandy made Brusilow concertmaster, which was a significant act of professional patronage. What Brusilow felt he owed in return, and what he ultimately refused to give up, drives the central tension of the book. His decision to form chamber groups and conduct on the side, activities Ormandy considered disloyal, effectively ended the father-son relationship Brusilow describes with real grief. The memoir handles this rupture with more complexity than simple grievance, which lifts it above the standard score-settling memoir.
The Baton as Liberation and Risk
Brusilow’s desire to conduct rather than simply play is the psychological spine of the book. He articulates with unusual clarity the specific frustration of the concertmaster position: the intimacy with the entire orchestral sound, the proximity to the conductor’s interpretive authority, and the simultaneous limitation of having only one instrumental voice. This is not a complaint most listeners will have considered before, and Brusilow makes it feel urgent rather than abstract.
His subsequent work with the Philadelphia Chamber Symphony and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra receives less page time than his years under the big three conductors, which is a structural choice that reflects honestly where Brusilow’s emotional investment lies. The Foreword Reviews INDIEFAB Award recognition in performing arts and music is well-deserved for a memoir that does something rare: it lets the reader feel the specific texture of a professional musical life without romanticizing it.
What Narrator John Burlinson Brings
Burlinson is a reliable narrator for nonfiction of this complexity. He manages the considerable task of keeping Brusilow’s anecdotes organized across a 12-hour runtime without flattening the material into procedural recitation. His handling of musical terminology is clean, and he captures the dry wit in Brusilow’s voice without overdoing it. Some listeners accustomed to more animated narration may find his style understated, but for a memoir this dense with names, dates, and institutional politics, understated is probably the right call.
The reviewer T. Varley’s description of this as “a delightful book for anyone who wants a behind the scenes look at classical music in mid-20th Century America” is accurate as far as it goes, though the word “delightful” undersells the sharpness of some of what Brusilow reports. One reviewer flagged the book as potentially “too hermetic for someone wanting a colorful story,” and that is a fair caution: this is dense with insider knowledge, and listeners without at least a basic familiarity with the orchestral world may find some sections difficult to anchor.
Who Should Listen and Who Should Skip
Listen if you have any serious interest in classical music history, American orchestral culture of the 1950s through 1970s, or the psychology of conductors and their relationships with principal players. This is a genuinely important primary source document dressed as a memoir.
Skip if you are new to classical music and have no frame of reference for the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, or the figures Brusilow discusses at length. The book does not orient newcomers gently. It assumes you know why these names matter.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much musical knowledge do you need to follow this memoir?
A basic familiarity with the classical music world helps considerably. Brusilow assumes readers know who Ormandy, Szell, and Monteux are and why they mattered. The memoir works as history even without that background, but the anecdotes land harder if you understand the institutional stakes involved.
Is this memoir primarily about the conductors or about Brusilow’s own career?
Both, though the conductors often overshadow Brusilow himself, which seems to have been part of his experience. The three major relationships structure the narrative, and Brusilow’s own conducting career with the Philadelphia Chamber Symphony and Dallas Symphony gets proportionally less attention.
How does John Burlinson’s narration handle the 12-hour length?
Burlinson maintains consistency throughout, which is essential for a memoir this dense with names, anecdotes, and orchestral politics. The narration is clear and well-paced rather than expressive, which suits the material’s complexity but may feel dry to listeners accustomed to more performative delivery.
Is the title Shoot the Conductor literal or figurative?
Figurative, but not far off. The title captures the temperature of Brusilow’s feelings toward the conductors who both made and constrained his career. The memoir is candid about resentment, admiration, grief, and professional betrayal in roughly equal measure.
