Author, novelist, broadcaster, cultural commentator.

Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter @NLebrecht

Norman Lebrecht is one of the most widely-read commentators on music, culture and cultural politics. He is a regular presenter on BBC Radio and a contributor to the Wall Street Journal, The Spectator, The Critic, Scherzo and other international publications. His blog, Slippedisc, is the world’s #1 classical music news site with two million readers a month.

Norman Lebrecht’s many books – which include The Maestro Myth, When the Music Stops, Mahler Remembered and The Life and Death of Classical Music – have been translated into 17 languages. Among his recent works, Why Mahler? is the best-selling composer biography of the 21st century. Genius and Anxiety has been acclaimed as a major contribution to the history of the Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries.

His latest work, Why Beethoven was published in February 2023.

Norman Lebrecht’s first novel, The Song of Names, won the Whitbread Award in 2003 and has been filmed by Francois Girard with Clive Owen and Tim Roth in the lead roles.

His second novel, The Game of Opposites, was published in 2009.

Norman Lebrecht is a popular lecturer at cultural institutions and universities. He has lectured at the Universities of London, Yale, Syracuse, SUNY Buffalo, UMKC Kansas City, USC Los Angeles, Claremont McKenna, Carnegie Mellon, Tel Aviv, the University of Granada, Spain, and the Shanghai Conservatoire. He has also worked with the Gewandhaus zu Leipzig, Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, London South Bank Centre, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Intelligence Squared, the Shanghai International Literary Festival; and with festivals in Verbier, Toblach, Cheltenham, Budleigh Salterton, Usedom, Derry, Edinburgh, Melbourne and more.