Berlioz

This first volume of David Cairns's biography of Berlioz, first published a decade ago (when it won the Royal Philharmonic Society's Music Awards, the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year and The British Academies Derek Allen Prize) and now re-issued in a revised and corrected second edition, transforms our view of the composer of the Fantastic Symphony and has established itself as one of the outstanding biographies of any musician in English: "It is already clear," wrote one critic, "that Cairns is doing for Berlioz what Ernest Newman did for Wagner." In Berlioz: The Making of an Artist Cairns…