piano playing
A passion for music: Partita, by Barbara Kingsolver, reviewed
Livia Cable, from poor, rural eastern Tennessee, seems capable of becoming a concert pianist. But will her ambitions be forever thwarted?
Discordant times
Exiled from Russia and often denigrated in America, Rachmaninoff lived in a fug of unbearable, impenetrable sadness, says Paul Kildea
Salvation through music
Ours is the era of everybody’s autobiography. Bookshops groan with misery-lit memoirs — Never Let Me Go, Dysfunction Without Tears…
