The room changes when a true maestro enters—yet the most revealing stories often happen offstage. We sit down with Nancy Shear to explore the hidden lives behind classical music’s brightest names and the personal courage it takes to step through doors that weren’t built for you. From a conductor who needed worship more than love to a cellist whose wild openness defied a regime, this is a lived portrait of power, devotion, and the craft most people never see.
Nancy takes us inside a world of stage doors, library stacks, and late-night score study where color, balance, and bowings decide the fate of a performance. She speaks candidly about navigating inequity in the 60s, the “good girl” codes that marked the era, and the boundary crossings that come with proximity to influence. We trace the contrasts between Stokowski’s controlled, ageless aura and Rostropovich’s expansive, risk-soaked playing, then follow her to Cold War Moscow on a mission of friendship that became a lesson in fearlessness and human connection. Along the way, she reveals the origin of her book’s title, the thrill of shaking a hand that once shook Brahms’s, and the ritual of leaving soil from Beethoven and Mahler at a mentor’s grave.
This conversation is as tactile as it is philosophical: the scissors pressed into her palm, the hushed terror of a dressing room standoff, the way recordings fuse with memory until you can’t tell vibration from recollection. We talk about archives, firings, and where the music lives after the music stops. Most of all, we talk about belonging—how to claim it without permission, how to practice “good trouble,” and how persistence becomes destiny. If you’ve ever loved a sound enough to rebuild your life around it, this one is for you.
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