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PT's 2005 Summer Book List
Classical Music in Seasonal Reading
Fred Child and the Performance Today staff have compiled a collection of entertaining fiction, animated and informative non-fiction and books for kids -- all about the world of classical music. (** Indicates new additions in 2005)
And if you have a favorite book we should consider adding to the list, let us know about it, and write your own blurb! Our e-mail address is pt@npr.org. We'll update the list throughout the summer.
FICTION
** The White Rose by Jean Hanff Korelitz
Richard Strauss' opera Der Rosenkavalier asks probing questions about the nature of love as we get older. The White Rose is an imaginative re-telling of the opera in modern-day Manhattan. Marian is a 48-year-old professor at Columbia, having an affair with a 26-year-old florist, who just happens to be the son of her oldest friend. He's trying to create the perfect white rose, but his customers complain it dies too quickly -- and this is just one of several affecting metaphors explored in the book. The New York Times Book Review calls The White Rose "incisive and urbane."
** Canone Inverso: A Novel by Paulo Maurensig
An engrossing short novel that has developed an almost cult following. On one level, the story is about a rare violin that comes up for auction in London and two main characters who share a passion for music. On another level, the story is told in a compellingly convoluted way, reminiscent of Italo Calvino's use of the novel as a playground of form. Read it the first time in a single sitting, then spend the rest of the summer going back for more.
** Music of a Life: A Novel by Andrei Makine
A slim volume, but a moving and poignant story. Alexe Berg is a talented pianist racing to embrace his identity as a musician and to escape his identity as the son of "suspect intellectuals" in Stalin's Russia. This novel proceeds quickly, in less than 150 pages, but in that brief span presents some penetrating questions. What choices does life present us? And are we sometimes forced to make compromises whose cost is incaculable?
** Night Music: A Mystery by Harrison Gradwell Slater
Slater has written non-fiction about Mozart's travels, but with Night Music, he uses his scholarly background to craft a Mozart mystery. What if a traveling music scholar stumbled across a lost diary by the young Mozart? And what if this document led him into a tangled web of intrigue, sex, shadowy international syndicates and murder?
Sleeping with Schubert by Bonnie Marson
Very unmusical Brooklyn lawyer Liza Durbin is suddenly possessed by the spirit of Franz Schubert in this charming (if hokey) book by first-time novelist Bonnie Marson. NB: There is a companion CD to this book, a collection of Schubert piano solos and orchestral excerpts on the Sony Classical label. NPR's Lisa Simeone recently reviewed the novel for The Baltimore Sun. (Registration required)
The Student Conductor by Robert Ford
Cooper Barrow, 30, is an American conductor who dropped out of the Juilliard School but whose musical gifts win him an invitation to Germany to study with a gruffly brilliant German conductor. It is 1989, just as the old barriers between East and West Germany are crumbling. Barrow's love of music and his affections for a young oboist set him at odds with his conducting mentor.
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
Inspired by real-life soprano Renee Fleming, Ann Patchett creates Roxane Coss, who is among those taken hostage when terrorists storm a banquet in an un-named South American country. The hostages share no common language -- except music.
Marrying Mozart by Stephanie Cowell
A former opera singer, Cowell's fourth novel centers on the daughters of the Weber family, one of whom will eventually marry a talented but scruffy composer named Mozart. Sibling rivalry, love, social politics, and historical drama are all buoyed by tales of music and musical life.
An Equal Music by Vikram Seth
In this contemporary love story, Michael Holme is the disgruntled second violinist in the Maggiore Quartet. Julia MacNicoll is a pianist he once loved and lost, but they find each other again, at which point the musical drama really begins. Set in London, Vienna, and Venice, the story features music by Schubert and Beethoven. The CD 'Vikram Seth: An Equal Music' accompanies the novel.
Disturbance of the Inner Ear by Joyce Hackett
Isabel Masurovsky is a cellist, a former child prodigy. When she gave a stunning concert at Carnegie Hall at age 14, her career seemed assured. But when her parents died shortly after that in a car accident, she gave up music altogether. Ten years later, she stumbles into a job as a viola teacher, and her tangled journey back to music begins.
The Time of Our Singing by Richard Powers
A German Jewish émigré meets a gifted young African American singer at an event charged with social meaning -- Marian Anderson's concert on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in 1939. Their shared passion for music brings them together and they commit to build a family based on love of music, despite the differences in their ethnic backgrounds. Their mixed race children choose different paths as they grow up during the American 1960s, choosing different music -- and even different racial identities for themselves.
The Unconsoled by Kazuo Ishiguro
A challenging but deeply rewarding novel about a concert pianist whose identity becomes lost in his public persona. Time is warped, cause and effect lose their usual meaning, fact and fancy melt into one another. It's a psychological drama, perhaps not best suited to an afternoon on the beach -- better for a week alone in the desert!
The Piano: A Novel by Jane Campion
A novel based on the movie, The Piano. Jane Campion won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for her film in 1993. This is the novelized version of the movie. Ada is a mute with a story to tell, and only a piano to speak through.
Violin by Anne Rice
A recently widowed classical music lover is haunted by the ghost of a violinist who intends to drive her mad. It's gothic, campy, over-the-top melodrama!
Bliss: A Novel by Gabrielle Pina
A page-turner about a beautiful world-famous violinist, whose true identity only becomes clear after the death of her mother.
The Vanishing Violinist: A Joan Spencer Mystery by Sara Hoskinson Frommer
In real life, author Sara Hoskinson Frommer plays viola in the Bloomington Symphony in Indiana. (She says she writes better than she plays!) This is the fourth in her series of Joan Spencer mysteries -- but her first about classical music. A series of accidents befall fiddlers competing in the Indianapolis Violin Competition, and eventually, well, the title tells you the worst of it. Joan Spencer must sort out clues and motives to find the truth.
Dissonance by Lisa Lenard Cook
A piano teacher in Los Alamos, New Mexico, inherits the life's work of a composer she's never heard of. It seems non-sensical, until she begins to play some of the music and read the composer's journals. Long buried stories of her own family are revealed, connecting with the nearby nuclear labs, and faraway World War II concentration camps.
NON-FICTION
** Classical Music in America: A History of Its Rise and Fall by Joseph Horowitz
Horowitz details a nearly 200-year history of classical music in this country -– as he sees it, with music on the rise during the first century and on the decline since around 1900. While he doesn't necessarily despair for the future of the art form in America, he is not altogether hopeful. How is it our music scene has taken a century-long nosedive? Horowitz is quite critical of the cult of personality surrounding conductors and classical "stars" and of the artistic choices of many American music administrators. Any discussion of the future of classical music in America has to address both boldly and honestly the issues Horowitz addresses.
** Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs and Classical Music by Blair Tindall
Think classical music is all about prim decorum and being on one's best behavior? Think again. This book reveals the steamy and seamy side and a few of the secrets most folks in classical music would rather you didn't know. Mozart in the Jungle is a memoir by a long-time New York oboist turned writer. It's one part kiss-and-tell ("Why did I bother with an answering machine? I got hired for most of my gigs in bed"), one part rant against the machinations of the classical world that drive idealistic musicians to self-medication and grinding low-wage jobs, and one part confessional about Tindall's struggles with her career and musicianship. Nude midnight swims on Philharmonic tours, drug-addled sessions of listening to Wagner, reading magazines while simultaneously playing in a Broadway show pit… this is the world of a classical oboist? Blair Tindall has had it with classical music's patina of elitism and tries to get real.
** The Classical Guitar Book: A Complete History edited by John Morrish
A lavish softcover book, dense with rich photographs and essays sure to warm the heart of any guitar-o-phile. Essays touch on guitar history, technique, acoustics, playing styles, the classical guitar in non-classical settings and great guitarists and guitar-makers through the centuries.
** Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society by Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said
Barenboim is a Jewish pianist and conductor, Edward Said (recently deceased) was a Palestinian cultural critic, and a fine amateur pianist. Barenboim and Said had an ongoing public dialogue over nearly 10 years that began with composer Richard Wagner and the question of anti-Semitism in his music, but spread from there to cover a huge range of philosophical and political and deeply personal issues. Music was their touchstone throughout these conversations. Their different backgrounds served as a source, not of friction, but of creative ferment and compassion. These essays are at once sensitive, highly analytical, and touched with intelligent humor.
** Evenings with the Orchestra by Hector Berlioz, edited and translated by Jacques Barzun
Yes, a book written by 19th-century French composer, Hector Berlioz! Just as his music was wildly imaginative, over-the-top and careening between beautiful and hilarious… so is this collection of his writings. When he loves a composer (like Beethoven or Mozart), he makes his case in sparking prose. When he hates a composer (like Rossini or Bellini), he can be as biting and hilarious as Mark Twain. This is the man who did more to create the modern orchestra the anyone else in the last 200 years. On that basis alone, his thoughts would be worth hearing. But he's so entertaining and provocative a writer, it's easy to be completely absorbed by his creative style, no matter what the topic. Reviewers have called his approach "screamingly hilarious" and one says this is "the funniest book ever written." There are places where you have to love classical music to get the jokes, but it's ticklingly entertaining to get to know the mind behind the music.
Piano Shop on the Left Bank by Thad Carhart
While living in Paris, American writer Thad Carhart stumbled across a fascinating-looking piano shop. He tries to step in, but finds that the proprietor only allows a select few clients to share his piano-centric world. Carhart is persistent, and finally gets an introduction that allows him entry. His book is not only a description of a growing musical friendship, but a reflection on history, mechanisms, and design of pianos, and a loving portrait of the relationship between pianos and their owners.
Beethoven's Hair by Russell Martin
Hours after Beethoven died, a young admirer clipped a lock of his hair. That lock of the great composer's hair was sold at auction in 1994. Where did that keepsake go between 1827 and 1994? And what can its look and feel (not to mention DNA) tell us about the nature of Beethoven's genius? Besides which, who were the two oddballs who bought Beethoven's hair from Sotheby's?
Wondrous Strange: The Life and Art of Glenn Gould by Kevin Bazzana
In his new biography of the great Canadian pianist, Bazzana offers a concise and entertaining portrait of Gould, with a particular focus on an often-overlooked aspect of Gould's personality: his "Canadian-ness." Gould was famously eccentric, but Bazzana claims many of these so-called eccentricities were either simple artistic habits, or journalistic embellishments.
Music, the Brain, and Ecstasy: How Music Captures our Imagination by Robert Jourdain
How is it that music captivates us like no other stimulation, natural or cultural? Jourdain is a musician himself, but doesn't limit himself to musical ideas. He tosses philosophy, psychology, and science in the mix to explore music's strange power over us. He dissects the elements of music and the nature of listening in a wide-ranging and animated flurry of ideas.
The Inextinguishable Symphony: A True Story of Music and Love in Nazi Germany by Martin Goldsmith
An intensely moving memoir of personal discovery of family history, and a chilling story of increasing repression, persecution, and eventual mass-murder in Nazi Germany. Goldsmith's parents were Jewish musicians who narrowly survived the war. It was not until many years later that they began to share with their son, the author, the nature of what brought them together, and what they survived.
Martin Goldsmith is a special friend of many of us -- for ten years he was host of NPR's Performance Today.
Classical Music for Dummies by David Pogue
Despite the title, this is a book for smart, curious readers. If you take in everything Pogue so entertainingly offers, you'll listen to music with increased interest and engagement, and you'll be able to baffle your musician friends with all manner of musical facts, figures, history, and anecdotes.
KIDS
** The Heroic Symphony by Anna Harwell Celenza, illustrated by JoAnn E. Kitchel
The story of the 31-year-old Beethoven, beginning to lose his hearing and deeply troubled by war in Europe. He sets out to compose a symphony expressing his own struggle and the struggle of all people to be free -- his Eroica Symphony, or "Heroic Symphony." With illustrations on every page, and a CD of the Chicago Symphony with a classic recording of Beethoven's Third. 32 pages. Suitable for ages 6-10.
** The Farewell Symphony by Anna Harwell Celenza, illustrated by JoAnn E. Kitchel
One of Europe's great composers is kept jumping by his boss, Prince Nicolas. When the prince tries to keep Haydn and the entire court symphony at his summer palace deep into autumn, the musicians are longing to get home to their families. How can Haydn tell the Prince it's time to pack up for the season, with giving offense? By writing a theatrical "Farewell" Symphony! Includes a fine recording of two Haydn Symphonies. Ages 6-10.
** Berlioz the Bear by Jan Brett
School Library Journal calls this a "cohesive, thoroughly entertaining work that subtly introduces young readers to the world of music." Berlioz (not the composer, the bear!) hears an odd buzzing from his double bass. The buzz distracts him as he's driving the bear band wagon, and they wind up in a hole. The buzzing turns out to be something that can get them out of their predicament. Brett does her own rich illustrations in pen-and-ink, colored pencil and watercolors. Ages 4-8.
Why Beethoven Threw the Stew by Steven Isserlis
Steven Isserlis is a great English cellist, and a fine storyteller. He picks six of his favorite composers: Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, Schumann, and Stravinsky. He paints portraits of them not as titans of a difficult art, but as simple human beings. Their foibles, eccentricities and bumblings make their brilliant music seem all the more astonishing.
The Remarkable Farkle McBride by John Lithgow
Yes, that John Lithgow, star of stage and screen. A little tough to find at the moment, but worth the effort for your 4-7 year olds! Lavishly illustrated by C.F. Payne, this is the story of a boy who CAN play any instrument there is, but he is having a hard time finding one he wants to play. Until he discovers that by conducting, by not really playing any single instrument, he gets to play them all.
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