Harvey Sachs, (born Cleveland, Ohio, June 8, 1946) is an American-Canadian-Swiss writer who has written many books on musical subjects.
His books include the standard biography of and a book of essays on the Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini, plus an edited collection of Toscanini's letters.
- Toscanini, Philadelphia & New York: J. B. Lippincott, 1978.
- Reflections on Toscanini, New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1991.
- The Letters of Arturo Toscanini, ed., New York: Knopf, 2002.
Sachs has also written books on great musical virtuosi, a history of music in Italy during the fascist period, the definitive biography of Arthur Rubinstein, and, most recently, a book on Beethoven's Ninth Symphony that is part cultural history, part musical description, and part personal memoir.
- Virtuoso, London, New York: Thames & Hudson, 1982.
- Music in Fascist Italy, New York: W. W. Norton, 1988.
- Rubinstein: A Life, New York: Grove Press, 1995.
- The Ninth: Beethoven and the World in 1824, New York: Random House, 2010.
Sachs co-authored the memoirs of Plácido Domingo and Sir Georg Solti.
- Domingo, Plácido, My First Forty Years, New York: Knopf, 1983.
- Solti, Georg, Memoirs, New York: Knopf, 1997.
Harvey Sachs has written over 600 articles and other pieces for periodicals that include
The New Yorker, The New York Times, the
Wall Street Journal, and the
Times [London] Literary Supplement; record companies that include Deutsche Grammophon and RCA/BMG; and many radio and television programs. His most recent job for television has been co-authoring (with director Larry Weinstein) the Ideale-Audience production, "Toscanini in His Own Words", was shown by BBC, Arte, and other major networks worldwide in 2009.
Sachs lived in Europe for more than 30 years, mostly in Italy but also in England and Switzerland. From 2004 to 2006 he was Artistic Director of the Societa' del Quartetto di Milano, Italy's oldest extant and most prestigious concert society. He currently lives in New York City.
Since May 2008 he has had a blog on the ArtsJournal.com website; see www.ArtsJournal.com/Overflow. He also edits the online Articles & Essays column for the OREL Foundation (www.orelfoundation.org), which is dedicated to promoting music by composers who were suppressed under the Nazi and related regimes.