Editions Laffont publishes Le Nouveau Dictionnaire des Interprètes by Alain Pâris, a completely revised edition of the book first published in 1982 and completed back in 1995. Today, 3.800 musicians are referenced, and of course, new names appear alongside the legends of past times. There is also, understandingly, an overload of not very known French musicians. Hence, the book has severe deficits regarding other countries. Checking just a few names which were on our desk while having a look at the new dictionary, we missed people like Kristian Bezuidenhout, Valer Sabadus, Evgeny Sudbin or all three prominent German cellists Johannes Moser, Daniel Müller-Schott and Jan Vogler, as well as violinist Carolin Widmann and one of the world’s finest clarinettists, Jörg Widmann. While noting that the update for the very recent change at the Ebène Quartet (Adrien Boisseau) was done, we also saw that changes for Antoni Wit and the Warsaw Philharmonic (going back to 2013) were not made. We probably could have found a number of other mistakes, which of course devaluates the dictionary. But can it ever by up to date?
On the other hand, the dictionary is useful with a big number of biographies you won’t even find in the Internet.
In the second part of the book, an imposing list shows orchestras, operas, choirs and chamber music ensembles classified by countries. Here again, the choices are arbitrary, but most of the important formations are listed.
Alain Pâris:
Le Nouveau dictionnaire des interprètes
Publisher : Robert Laffont
ISBN: 9782221145760
