[5] Although lacking any formal musical education – he had great difficulty reading scores – Heyworth championed his preferences and attacked his bêtes noires with equal outspokenness.
He reduced secretaries to tears,[2][4] quarrelled with Sir Malcolm Sargent[2] and Colin Davis,[6] dismissed André Previn as "mediocre",[7] provoked William Walton into writing music intended to upset him,[8] and wrote so woundingly about Elisabeth Schwarzkopf that she permanently gave up singing at Covent Garden.
[9] He praised the works of Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Harrison Birtwistle,[2][4] criticised Ralph Vaughan Williams for "heavy-handed heartiness" and being amateurish in his orchestration.
The first volume was published in 1983; reviewing it in The New York Times, John Rockwell described it as "one of the most informative, readable musical biographies ever written".
[13] Reviewing it in The Sunday Times, Hugh Canning called it "essential reading, not only for the even-handed way he analyses Klemperer's complex musical personality, but also for the richly detailed picture he paints of an era in music-making in which artistic values still counted for a great deal".