Piano Entanglements

In the spring, while stuck at home avoiding the coronavirus, I read Lea Singer’s forthcoming novel, The Piano Student, which tells the story of Vladimir Horowitz’s affair with a 23-year-old male protege, Nico Kauffman. Drawing from Horowitz’s actual letters to Kauffman, Singer depicts a forbidden relationship in which Horowitz vacillates between ardently declaring his love and coldly insisting he’s no longer interested in an illicit affair. Reading Singer, I began to think more about the relationships—romantic and platonic—that have complicated the lives of great pianists. These relationships have been memorialized in biographies, of course. But how many, I wondered, have been imagined in fiction? I did some looking and discovered there are many novels about pianists who have had life-altering relationships with lovers, students, friends, and others in their orbit. These novels brim with insights into the nature of creative genius and life in classical music. Here’s a list of the works I enjoyed reading the most.