Boston Symphony Orchestra: Cooking with Music

Indeed, there is something here for picnic or feast or solitary meal that would please both the common and uncommon man, both the most avid carnivore and the most fastidious vegetarian.

But what makes this finely crafted book special is the abundance of history that borders most every centerpiece of a recipe, made alive by sketches and personal reminiscences of distinguished personalities long associated with one of America's most venerable institutions of music - the BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (BSO).

So, as one leafs through the pages of delightful recipes, one meanders through a century of collective and individual memories...

...of SYMPHONY HALL, BSO's hallowed home: from the day one hundred years ago when it first opened its doors to honored guests, revealing elegant interiors and unmatched acoustics, to the present as - now a National Historic Landmark - it enters its second century with a year-long musical celebration;

...of how the BSO grew to become, with the Boston Pops and Tanglewood, the one big happy family it is today;

...of the people who in making legend of Boston's musical history have themselves become legend: Serge Koussevitzky, Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Fiedler, Harry Ellis Dickson, to name a few; of the people who in charting the BSO's present and recent past are well on their way to becoming the legends of tomorrow: Seiji Ozawa, John Williams, Keith Lockhart; and of past and present luminaries who gladly made and make inspired music with one of the world's great orchestras;

...all told through numerous insightful anecdotes - often punctuated with humor, sketches bearing the personal imprint of Olga Koussevitsky and Martha Burnham Humphrey, and recipes that reveal the classical artists' consuming passions.

Indeed this is more than a cookbook; it whets the appetite - for food, music and bits of Americana. In other words, it's a lot of fun!

Click below for a sampling of the recipes, a taste of the humor, and a mix 'n match FanFaire quiz.

- GCajipe / FanFaire

This book was a FanFaire-BSO 2000 GIVEAWAY.

Book details - A fund-raising project of the Boston Symphony Association of Volunteers (BSAV); Publisher: Boston Symphony Orchestra, Inc. Printer: The Wimmer Company Publication date: December 1999 ISBN: 0-9671148-0-2 LCCN: 99-73276 Number of pages: 332 Number of recipes: 262