The Piano Student
"Explosively passionate, this story of forbidden love and unmet potential is ... for anyone who's ever felt the ineffable power of music."
--Aja Gabel, author of The Ensemble
The Piano Student is a novel about regret, secrecy, and music, involving an affair between one of the 20th century's most celebrated pianists, Vladimir Horowitz, and his young male student, Nico Kaufmann, in the late 1930s. As Europe hurtles toward political catastrophe and Horowitz ascends to the pinnacle of artistic achievement, the great pianist hides his illicit passion from his wife Wanda, daughter of the renowned conductor Arturo Toscanini. The affair is narrated by Kaufmann in the 1980s to another music devotee, who comes to him enchanted by Schumann's composition Träumerei and awakens memories of the thwarted relationship. Based on unpublished letters by Horowitz to Kaufmann that author Lea Singer discovered in Switzerland, the novel portrays the anguish that the acclaimed musician felt about his never publicly acknowledged homosexuality and the attendant duplicity of his personal life. It's a riveting and sensitive tale of musical perfection, love, and longing denied, with multiple historical layers and insights into artistic creativity.
Author: Lea Singer
Publisher: New Vessel Press
Published: 10/06/2020
Pages: 230
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.55lbs
Size: 7.90h x 5.20w x 0.50d
ISBN: 9781939931863
Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 08/01/2020
Publishers Weekly 08/24/2020
Library Journal 10/01/2020 pg. 71
About the Author
Lauffer, Elisabeth: - Elisabeth Lauffer is the recipient of the 2014 Gutekunst Translation Prize. After graduating from Wesleyan University she lived in Berlin where she worked as a commercial translator and then obtained a master's in education from Harvard.Singer, Lea: - Lea Singer is a German cultural historian and a novelist who uses a pseudonym for her fictional works. Under her legal name of Eva Gesine Baur, she has authored biographies of Frédéric Chopin and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. She has also written novels inspired by the lives of pianist Paul Wittgenstein and painter Caspar David Friedrich.