The conductor is a highly praised and equally highly contentious representative of musical life. Mahler, Furtwängler and Karajan are in equal measure the objects of hero-worship and suspected of shamanism, or victims of the uncertainties of musical judgement. Peter Gülke, conductor, musicologist and writer on music sketches portraits from the inner life of the orchestra with both head and heart: the spectrum ranges from Hans von Bülow through Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Herbert von Karajan, Carlos Kleiber and many others, to the recently-deceased Nikolaus Harnoncourt. Peter Gülke was Conductor at the Staatsoper in Dresden and Director of Music at the Staatskapelle in Weimar and Wuppertal. He has held chairs of conducting at the Musikhochschue Freiburg and of musicology at the University of Basel. Awarded the Sigmund Freud Prize for academic writing, the Bavarian Literature Prize for academic writing of a literary standard, and the Ernst von Siemens Music Prize. sakriti opis