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HUNGARIAN DANCES
(Hodder & Stoughton, 2008, £19.99 hardback)
When disaster befalls her best friend, Karina feels compelled to question the very foundations of her existence. Born in Britain to Hungarian parents, wife to a very English husband and mother of a young son descended on one side from the lord of the manor and on the other from a dynasty of wandering minstrels, Karina feels she belongs in neither one world nor the other. But Rohan, a fellow violinist and fan of her own grandmother, encourages her to delve into her Hungarian family background and her Gypsy ancestry. Her discoveries will change her life forever.
Past and present collide in the intertwining stories of Karina and her grandmother, the celebrated violinist Mimi Rácz. Love and loss, displacement and continuity mingle in a moving panorama that spans eighty years and is permeated by the family’s one constant: the sound of the violin.
Hungarian Dances is a love story, a mystery and a tale of extraordinary personal transformation.
Read the first three pages of "Hungarian Dances " here |
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After having read Rites of Spring, I am now equally thrilled by Hungarian Dances. Jessica Duchen is a very gifted storyteller; her characters are sensitively portrayed. She has observed "Hungarianness" very well indeed. And her understanding of the tragedy and sufferings of the Gypsy people - that is not just history, but very much a problem of our time - gives this book an even more profound meaning. - András Schiff
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"The pages of Hungarian Dances just kept turning! Like all the best novels, it asks unexpected and compelling questions. It's a book for anyone with an interest in how history leaves its mark on people and how they in turn come to live with its scars."- Martin Davies, author, The Conjuror's Bird
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ALICIA’S GIFT
(Hodder & Stoughton, 2007, £19.99 hardback)
When does a dream become an obsession? And whose dream is it anyway?
Alicia Bradley, aged three, sits down at the family piano and plays with both hands, by ear, in the right key, a piece she’s just heard at nursery school. Her family, seeking a quiet life in Derbyshire, doesn’t know what’s hit them. Alicia’s dad, Guy, plays the piano himself, but only for fun. Alicia’s mum, Kate, had wanted to become a musician, but her parents forbade it. As it becomes clear that they’ve got a prodigy on their hands, Kate’s determined to give Alicia every chance to succeed, but Guy laments his daughter’s lost childhood; and Alicia’s brother, Adrian, sidelined amid the fracas, becomes a tearaway who can see matters more clearly than all the others put together. It’s only Alicia, an affectionate, straightforward girl who loves to go running with her dog, who doesn’t seem to get a say in things…
As Alicia grows up, everyone wants a piece of the Peak District Prodigy. Alicia has several lifelines: her dog, Cassie; her friend Anjali, a young Indian pianist; her sympathetic agent; and, possibly, a boy from Bloomington. But amid a warring family, unscrupulous teachers and the constant pressures of practising, concerts and competitions, will she ever be allowed a real life of her own?
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RITES
OF SPRING
(Hodder & Stoughton, 2006, £18.99 hardback)
When does a free spirit become a lost soul? Adam and Sasha have
a teenage daughter, small twin boys, a pleasant home in south-west
London and apparently fulfilling careers. But when Adam cracks
under grief after his mother's death, resigns from his job and
breaks a longstanding promise to Sasha, family communication begins
to crumble and collapse. Sasha desperately tries to juggle her
high-flying career with managing the energetic twins; her sister,
Lisa, a musicologist specialising in Stravinsky, adores the children
but suffers in an unsatisfactory long-distance relationship with
a concert pianist; and Adam is battling many lost dreams of his
own.
Liffy, aged 13, is caught between the household tensions and her
dreams of becoming a ballet dancer. Her imaginary guide, whom
she names 'the Earth Prince', seems to encourage her to stay clear,
stay light, stay in control; and her aunt Lisa takes her to see
the ballet The Rite of Spring in which a young girl dances herself
to death, sacrificed to save her tribe. As Liffy's world implodes,
the whole family must make sacrifices before it's too late…
Read
the first three pages of "Rites of Spring" here |
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GABRIEL
FAURÉ
(Phaidon Press, 2000, £14.99)
Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) is, for me, the most elusive
and enchanting voice in the music of fin-de-siècle France.
Composer, pianist, professor to such figures as Ravel, Enescu
and Nadia Boulanger and director of the Paris Conservatoire, Fauré
struggled to find enough time to compose. Quietly independent,
he went his own artistic way, preferring intimate genres, avoiding
the influence of Wagner and seeking inspiration instead in music
as diverse as Gregorian chant, Schumann, Chopin and his lifelong
mentor, Saint-Saëns. He knew many of the great artistic figures
of his day, including the writers Ivan Turgenev and Marcel Proust,
the singer Pauline Viardot, the poet Paul Verlaine and composers
as diverse as Tchaikovsky, Debussy and Elgar; and after his marriage
turned sour, his love affairs were legion. Ever youthful in spirit,
despite the deafness that blighted his old age, he never ceased
exploring new musical worlds.
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Fauré
remains one of my greatest musical passions. I am eternally seduced
by his subtlety, his ineffable sense of beauty and poetry, his double
meanings, the way he veils his deeply passionate and sensual nature
with a veneer of French 'pudeur'. This book offers a straightforward
account for general music lovers of his life and work. |
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INSIDE
LONDON
(Lund Humphries, 2000, £32.50)
Dorothy Bohm, a fabulous photographer and a family friend
for decades, invited me to write the text for her highly individual
portrait of contemporary London. She wanted not a conventional
essay, but an exploration involving creativity, imagination,
a response to her artistic vision and the direct experience
of living in this melting pot of a metropolis. I feel honoured
to be involved in this beautiful book.
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ERICH
WOLFGANG KORNGOLD
(Phaidon Press, 1996, £14.99)
The extraordinary life of Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957)
moves from his childhood as a Viennese wunderkind composer,
through the traumatic years leading up to the Second World
War and into exile in Hollywood where he composed film music
for Warner Brothers. Cursed with a powerful music critic for
a father - a relationship second in difficulty only to that
of Leopold and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart - Korngold struggled
all his life for emotional and artistic independence, not
always successfully. This biography offers an accessible and
readable introduction to his life and amazing work.
I
fell in love with Korngold's music when I heard his opera
Die tote Stadt for the first time. Everything he composed,
however, is filled with a warm, overflowing, generous spirit.
I still love him most for his imperfections: he has the
guts to risk absolutely everything and occasionally lose.
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