The Music Teacher - Hardcover

Starer, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0879517565 ISBN 13: 9780879517564

Publisher: Overlook Books, 1997

Synopsis

A distinguished pianist, Bernard Winter falls in love with Lydia, one of his talented students, but as she reaches the heights of her musical career, he learns a devastating secret about her. A first novel.

About this title

Review:

When pianist Bernard Winter first meets his student, Lydia, he doesn't see anything particularly extraordinary about this recently divorced woman who hopes playing piano will soften the pain of her failed marriage. Then Lydia plays for him, and beneath her amateurish technique, he detects a conviction, a joy in the music that sets her apart. Winter takes her on and soon falls in love with her. So much faith does he have in her musical ability that he decides to return to the cutthroat world of professional music in order to play with her in a joint recital at Carnegie Hall, where a terrible secret is revealed.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Starer, a distinguished composer and author of a fetching memoir (Continuo: A Life in Music, 1987), makes a droopy fiction debut with this predictable tale of a gifted piano teacher's late- in-life bid for lasting romance and a new concert career. Bernard Winter, once a promising concert pianist, is now, in late middle age, a sought-after teacher who plays only occasionally in public, at low-profile events. The son of German-Jewish refugees (his father a Dachau survivor, his mother mentally ill), he had the talent, but not the temperament, for a big-time competitive career. His love-life has been active, but sporadic, since the long-ago collapse of his marriage to an ambitious opera singer. Then Lydia Harding arrives: lovely, timid, recently divorced, with a charming young son--and a great musical gift that no one (certainly not her parents or her domineering ex-husband) has ever fully appreciated. Her talent blossoms under Bernard's tutelage; they become friends, piano-playing companions, and, inevitably, lovers. Buoyant, they decide to try for a major career as a piano duo, building toward a New York debut at Weill Hall. But a harsh review exposes Lydia's fragility, and Bernard turns back to his only true love--music. Despite a few engaging anecdotes, some down-to-earth comments on the culture scene, and much musical erudition: a pallid novel- -bogged down by stilted dialogue, awkward flashbacks, and earnest yet superficial strivings for psychological insight. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Overlook Books
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0879517565
• ISBN 13: 9780879517564
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208