The Piano Student

Lea Singer

ISBN 10: 193993186X / ISBN 13: 9781939931863

Published by New Vessel Press, 2020

About this Item

"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. Based on unpublished letters by Horowitz to Kaufmann that author Lea Singer discovered in Switzerland, this is a riveting and sensitive tale of musical perfection, love, and longing denied, with multiple historical layers and insights into artistic creativity.

Seller Inventory # CIN193993186XG

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Piano Student
• Publisher: New Vessel Press
• Publication Date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 193993186X
• ISBN 13: 9781939931863
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis

"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. Based on unpublished letters by Horowitz to Kaufmann that author Lea Singer discovered in Switzerland, this is a riveting and sensitive tale of musical perfection, love, and longing denied, with multiple historical layers and insights into artistic creativity.

About the Authors

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.

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.