The Piano Student

by Lea Singer, Elisabeth Lauffer (Translator)

The Piano Student centers on 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 love from his wife Wanda, the daughter of the renowned conductor Arturo Toscanini. The affair is narrated by Kaufmann in the 1980s to another music devotee, who comes to him enchanted by Schumann’s composition Träumerei and awakens memories of the thwarted relationship. Kaufmann is spending his final years playing in small-time Zurich bars, never rivaling his teacher’s musical mastery and rapturously received concerts. Based on unpublished letters by Horowitz to Kaufmann that author Lea Singer herself discovered in Switzerland, the novel portrays the anguish that the acclaimed musician felt about his never publicly acknowledged homosexuality and the attendant duplicity of his personal life. It's a riveting and sensitive tale of musical perfection, love, and longing denied, with multiple historical layers and insights into artistic creativity.

Genres: Fiction, Music, Gay, Historical Fiction, Queer, LGBT, Germany

230 pages, Hardcover

Published October 6, 2020

Reviews

[Jenny (Reading Envy) · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author of this book took a few letters between esteemed pianist Vladimir Horowitz and his student, Nico Kaufmann, and turned them into a novel about their relationship in the 1930s. According to other sources like Horowitz, Horowitz adamantly denied he was gay, and this book suggests several reasons for that claim. He was living in Germany in the 1930s but saw the writing on the wall and relocated to Switzerland, and according to Singer many known homosexual musicians got married in a hurry to deny such accusations. Horowitz, referred to in the novel as Volodya, marries Wanda, who is the daughter of Toscanini. This is during one of the periods in time where Volodya stopped performing in public.

I love Horowitz and when I was studying the piano music of Chopin, Scriabin, Beethoven and Brahms in college, I listened to him frequently for tone and interpretation. He's really quite amazing and also unpredictable. The publisher of this book has actually put together two playlists of the pieces mentioned, and really how could you ever read this book without listening to the music, it's so essential to the story. (It's available in Spotify and YouTube.) From a musical interactivity standpoint, I give this book all the stars.

But I found some of the authorial decisions confusing and it made for a difficult reading experience. The entire story is told by Kaufmann as an older man to a random guy he meets in a bar, who up until that moment was going to commit suicide. I never understood why he was in the story at all. But it removes the story itself and turns it into an info dump, a narrated road trip, a slide show. The moments where Kaufmann and Horowitz are described in the room together have great energy, and the mention of confrontations with WANDA are exhilarating, but the majority of the novel is a summary of those moments. The dialogue is unmarked which gets very confusing, and I couldn't always tell if the words were coming from the two talking about the previous events or the people within those events.

It's clear the author is a historian and did a lot of research; I would have like to know more about that research, including which parts of the story are factual and which are manufactured to make it a good story. Am I encountering historical characters or a novelization of a romance that someone wished for? We can't know everything for sure but what DO we really know? Are the letters mentioned transcriptions of the actual letters or imagined versions? I just don't think that calling something a novel gives the author an excuse not to more clearly delineate fact vs. fiction when it's about someone who lived until 1989. You can read a shortened version of his amazing life in his obituary in the New York Times.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher through Edelweiss; it comes out October 6, 2020. I recommend it for anyone but especially those of you who like novels with music themes, you know who you are.

[Morgan · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a really hard book to follow and I don’t think the translation had anything to do with it!
The lack of quotation marks makes for frustrating reading. Half the time I don’t know who is speaking.
Scenes shift willy-nilly – where are they? Who is speaking?
Strange lines appear in the middle of a passage for no apparent reason – Page 60: - the waitresses tasted like caramel – (???)
This is a very strange writing style and I do not find it in any way literary – it’s just annoying!
Furthermore I think the author does not like Horowitz or Kaufmann very much.

If anyone can help with the following questions I would appreciate it:
Is Robert & Donati one and the same? And who exactly is he?

[Britta Böhler · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nope.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Revised and corrected, but not altered, in 2024)

I'd like to point out that I did not receive a copy of this book from anyone, I bought my own copy and I only mention this because so many of the English language reviewers received one. I do wish publishers or distributors in the USA would consider giving free copies to reviewers not based in the USA. We may not be as big a market but English language readers in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland and the United Kingdom do buy books (never mind readers of English in other places such as Netherlands).

Also I don't find it either unusual or disorienting to read a novel that avoids the use of " " to distinguish speech. I have just finished a novel 'The Elephant's Journey' by the very eminent and distinguished and best selling (in many languages including English - I am sadly monolingual and certainly not claiming otherwise) Portuguese author Jose Saramago who dispenses not only with the " " around speech but of things like paragraphs as well. So this habit may be one that is common amongst non English writers. I doubt if it is peculiar to Ms. Lea Singer.

As for the novel itself? I thought it brilliant and moving and one of the finest pieces of writing I have read in a long time. I wish the author had provided more details about the papers, partial memoir and letters that are the basis of this novel. We do not even know how many letters there are, but if what is said in the novel is true there may be hundreds of them. As of yet they have not been incorporated into any of the writings about Horowitz (though there are some very heavy weight endorsements from German language newspapers, musicians and writers on classical music) and significantly even Wikipedia doesn't have a listing in its article about Horowitz for 'appearances in other media'. No doubt the relative lack of scholarly or other interest is a result of the books publication in 2019 right when COVID made travel or access to the Zentralbibliothek in Zurich more or less impossible. I would hope that eventually musical (in all senses of the word - see my footnote *1 below) scholars will thoroughly digest what the archive can tell us not only about Horowitz but the world of queer men lived in the 1930's.

I have drifted away from the novel which I didn't mean to do because aside from being based around truth it is a very compelling read. The story is told via Horowitz's lover and first student Nico Kaufmann as he revisits the scenes of their love affair and reads excerpts from the letters Horowitz wrote to him when younger (Kaufmann is now over 70). This framing device has also received some harsh treatment from some reviewers which I totally refute but don't want to say why because it would involve spoilers and I refuse to diminish this novels impact by giving away stray details.

If you like your reading to be of the most simplistic nursery style where everything is laid out in 'Dick and Jane go up the hill' nursery level narrative without subtlety or shade than this novel will not be for you. But if you like and desire writing, including historical fiction writing, with bite, which is why I made the comparison earlier with the writing of Saramago, then you will enjoy this novel immensely

*1 I apologise for the poor joke - in the 1920's and 30's in the UK being 'musical' was a way of saying someone was queer without risking a libel action.

[Norman Weiss · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ein interessanter Roman über Begehren und Unterdrückung, über Prominenz und Angst, über Musik und Liebe.
Ein fesselndes Gespräch zweier Männer, in dem viele maßgeschneiderte rosa Hemden vorkommen.

[Martha Anne Toll]

Here is my review of this book for the Washington Independent Review of Books. http://www.washingtonindependentrevie...

[Ai Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a copy of this book through LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program, and I am grateful to the publisher for the opportunity to read this.

A compelling read based on real life letters between classical pianist Vladimir Horowitz and his student. Singer's frame story may confuse some readers or turn them off, but I found the beats between the content of the letters compelling and I think the ending pushed it from 3 stars to 4 for me; it just feels beautiful and a fascinating bringing together of art and politics, art and the personal, and the personal and the politics. It has that sort of old school melodramatic feeling of older gay fiction which I think can also be polarizing, but seems to work really well with the content of the letters.

[Joey · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Yes, this is the spot, somewhere around here, out of the wind. Horowitz wanted a smoke. He held the cigarette between his outstretched fingers, while I dug for a lighter. After I finally lit the cigarette, he took it out of his mouth, dropped it on the ground, and kissed me.”

So recalls Nico Kaufmann, detailing his first kiss with Vladimir Horowitz – one of the 20th century’s most celebrated pianists. Nico is twenty-one and Vladimir is his teacher, twelve years his senior, when they begin a doomed and forbidden affair in the late 1930s. This is a love story, but decidedly unromantic in many ways. It is a study of a dysfunctional and unhealthy relationship, bound between two men who deeply care for one another despite this – a couple for whom, if the circumstances around them had been different, could have made each other truly happy.

“By the time dessert arrived, he was finally ready to continue. We lay beside each other in the king-size bed, student and teacher napping, with barely a stitch of clothing between the two of us. We lay there like that every afternoon.”

Vladimir is in a loveless marriage. Nico sleeps with many people, men and women alike. This both frustrates and arouses Vladimir who on one hand condemns Nico for his lack of fidelity, but on the other hand pleads for Nico’s letters detailing his liaisons. Nico also suspects that Vladimir himself is having dalliances with other men. The letters themselves show Vladimir to be a man of contraries and contradictions, who vacillates from declarations of love towards Nico, to assassinating Nico’s character in the space of mere paragraphs.

“Here… Over the 1 ½ years I was your teacher and friend, I had to be very patient. Your way of living and thinking was often unattractive and alien to me! I told you that many times… You’ll get older and come to realise what you had with me as a person. Now look, Donati. He slid the page toward him and pointed at the word person. It was underlined three times.”

One knows from the beginning – by the method of a very traditional framing device and from the time period in which this is set – that this relationship could never have a happy ending. Could Vladimir have left his wife and quietly lived with Nico, somewhere far away from public scrutiny? Perhaps. But while Nico is content in his bisexuality, Vladimir is tormented by his homosexuality. One is constantly reminded of Vladimir’s acute suffering through his own words. One is right there with Nico as Vladimir continually breaks Nico’s heart and puts it back together, only to shatter it again.

This makes for powerful and vivid storytelling. I read this novel in one sitting, unable to tear my eyes away from the story that Nico was conveying. There is a part of the reader that longs above all for things to turn out well, whilst knowing that they cannot. Still, The Piano Student does not leave one with a feeling of hopelessness; rather, it encourages the reader into a more acute awareness of life's possibilities - whether they lead to happiness, or not.

With many thanks to Turnaround Publisher Services for providing me with this advanced reader copy.

[Bob H · Rating 4 out of 5]

A moody and fictionalized story of the closeted life of Vladimir Horowitz, as retold years later by a then-young protegé, Nico Kaufman. It's true enough to the world of concert music, to the times (mostly 1930s-1950s), to the wasted, frustrated, furtive lives of homosexuals at that time, even one as famous as Horowitz. We learn, second-hand, of Horowitz' unhappy marriage to the ferocious Wanda Toscanini, of his attempts at "cures", of his inability to find fulfillment, either personal or professional. In a way, Horowitz and Kaufman are emblematic of the closeted and unfulfilled lives of gay men in those years.

The English translation is smooth-reading and succinct.

(Read in advanced-reading copy via Amazon Vine.)

[Heinz · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ist das wirklich ein Roman oder hätte die Autorin stattdessen nicht lieber die editierten Briefe des Pianisten Horowitz veröffentlichen sollen? Man hat ständig das Gefühl, als würden einem Geheimnisse oder Inhalte der Briefe vorenthalten. Die Problematik der Homosexualität in den dreissiger Jahren des letzten Jahrhunderts wird zwar behandelt, aber die Hauptfiguren (Horowitz und sein Schüler/Sexualpartner) bleiben eher blass und die Handlung liesse sich statt auf über 200 Seiten gut als Kurzgeschichte zusammenfassen. Schreiben kann die Autorin, aber die Lesefreude nimmt mit der Zeit immer mehr ab und der Schluss ist absolut kitschig geraten.
Einige lesenswerte Zitate aus dem Roman möchte ich dennoch hier erwähnen: „Der plötzliche Tod (...) macht jeden verrückt. Er hat etwas Absurdes. Trotzdem wünschen sich den die meisten. Allerdings so spät wie möglich und am liebsten im Schlaf.“ (S. 93)
In Sachen Tod sind wir fast alle masslose Egoisten. Was den eigenen angeht: schneller Abgang. Was den anderen angeht: bitte mit ausreichend Zeit zur Wiedergutmachung.“ (S. 96)
„Schuldgefühle haben meistens die, die keine haben müssten, und diejenigen, die welche haben müssten, haben keine.“ (S. 100)
„Jede Familie, die zusammenhält, hat ein Geheimnis: das Geheimnis, das sie zusammenhält. Liebe ist es ziemlich selten.“ (S. 114)
„Wie haben Sie sich dabei gefühlt? Als Held (...) irgendwie großartig, leider. Wahre Helden fühlen sich nicht so, nur falsche.“ (S. 116)
„Sieh dir eine Frau beim Kochen von hinten an. Wenn sie konzentriert und leise hantiert, ist sie auch sonst gut, wenn sie lärmt, verschüttet, fahrig ist und flucht, lass die Finger von ihr.“ (S. 134)
„Horowitz hatte seit seiner Kindheit keine Synagoge von innen gesehen, er fühlte sich nicht als Jude, bis er von der Judenvernichtung erfuhr. Ging vielen so.“ (S. 159)

[Ricarda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eigentlich ganz interessant, aber der Stil und die fehlenden „“““““““““““ gefielen mir nicht

[Kylie · Rating 3 out of 5]

read around the world switzerland
this is fine! interesting history of real people and being gay and jewish during the 30/40s

[Gemma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Inspired by unpublished letters and extracts from a memoir discovered by the author in Switzerland, this is a fictionalised account of the love affair between the pianist Vladimir Horowitz and his student Nico Kaufmann in the late 1930s.

The story is told from the perspective of Kaufmann as an older and wiser man looking back on his relationship with Horowitz and recounting it to a stranger he meets in a piano bar in the 80s. I liked this as a narrative structure as it made many of the moments between him and Horowitz feel more touching and fleeting which added to the heartbreak of the story.

However, Kaufmann's memories are described like mini flashbacks with little distinction between the present day story and the flashbacks. Combined with a lack of speech marks, this made for quite a disjointed reading experience at times.

Overall the book does a good job of drawing on political and social tensions in the lead up to WW2 and exploring the dangers and emotional challenges of being homosexual, particularly for Horowitz with his level of fame and public versus private personas. It was in the intimate and private moments between Horowitz and Kaufmann that the book really shone.

Thank you to Turnaround UK and New Vessel Press for the review copy.

[Vicky · Rating 4 out of 5]

“...man muss nicht Thomas Mann sein. In jedem Menschen lebt vermutlich der Wunsch, erkannt zu werden. Erkannt als das, was er ist oder war.” (S. 126)


“Der Klavierschüler” von Lea Singer hat meines Erachtens ein klares Zielpublikum: Intellektuelle. Wer sich so gar nicht mit der Welt der europäischen Künstler*innen der 1930er Jahre auskennt, der hat hier schlechte Karten, überhaupt einen Einstieg zu finden. Klar, es geht eigentlich um eine Liebesgeschichte und die sollte ja für jede/n zugänglich sein, oder? Aber die Liebe zwischen dem Protagonisten, dem Schweizer Musiker Nico Kaufmann (1916-1986) und dem russischen Star-Pianisten Vladimir Horowitz (1903-1989) wird schon auf sehr verkopfte Weise präsentiert. Klar, das Buch ist hervorragend recherchiert und komponiert, aber selbst für die, denen Namen wie Antonio Borgese und Nathan Milstein etwas sagen, ist es eher geistige Arbeit als Lesevergnügen. 


"Der Klavierschüler” ist mehr fiktionalisierte Zeitgeschichte und literarische Autobiografie als ein klassisches Stück Literatur. Die Autorin hat sich am realen Leben von Nico Kaufmann orientiert. Als Basis ihrer Erzählung hat sie die Briefe von Horowitz an seinen Schüler Nico Kaufmann aus den Jahren 1937-1939 und dessen unveröffentlichte Romanfragmente quasi als Erste gesichtet und ausgewertet. Sie bilden das Grundgerüst der Handlung. Einzig durch den “Fremden” (Donati), den Singer als fiktionale Figur (glaube ich) einführt und der wegen der von Kaufmann gespielten Musik noch am Leben ist und jetzt seine Geschichte hört, verleiht sie der erzählten Biografie eine literarische Komponente.


Die Handlung ist spröde und an sich schon nicht so leicht zugänglich. Das liegt meines Erachtens an der verschachtelten Erzählsituation und auch an den fehlenden Anführungszeichen bei der direkten Rede. Man muss sich vieles erschließen: Wer spricht und welche Zeitebene wird besprochen. Die Rahmenhandlung spielt 1986 in Zürich, wo Nico Hoffmann auf den suizidgefährdeten Donati trifft. Am Anfang wird dieser Donati von der Schweizer Gesellschaft für Sterbehilfe gesucht, um ihn seinen finalen Drink, für den er unterschrieben hat, zu verabreichen. Donati entkommt aber, weil er Musik (Schumanns “Träumerei”) hören möchte. In einem Luxushotel trifft er auf Kaufmann, der ihm das Stück spielt und anschließend seine Lebensgeschichte erzählt. Dafür machen sie einen kleinen Roadtrip durch Zürich und drum herum. Bis auf ganz zu Beginn fehlt der Spannungsbogen und ich tat mich etwas schwer, an der Geschichte dranzubleiben.


Wenn ich an den Roman denke, kommen mir Nomen in den Sinn, die sich leitmotivisch durch dieses Buch ziehen: Musik, Klang, Sünde, Tod, Unsterblichkeit. Außerdem die Missachtung und Verfolgung, der Homosexuelle im 20. Jahrhundert ausgesetzt waren. Eine traurige Zeit und es bleibt uns allen zu hoffen, dass sich die Geschichte nicht wiederholt. Momentan sieht die Zukunft nicht so rosig aus und wir sollten wo es geht, die Fahne der Menschlichkeit und Toleranz hoch halten.


Ein sehr gutes, aber schwer zugängliches Buch mit einem schweren geistigen Überbau, in dem wir zwar eine Liebesgeschichte, aber nur wenig direkte erzählte Interaktion zwischen den Liebenden haben. Ich kann “Der Klavierschüler” allen empfehlen, die sich für queere Geschichte und Persönlichkeiten des 20. Jahrhunderts interessieren.

[Michael North · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received a copy of this book as an Early Reviewer on LibraryThing. I have mixed feelings about it. A significant stylistic decision on the author's part made it difficult for me to follow the book in the first 40 pages, when I finally realized that the author was leaving out quotation marks for all speaking parts- before I figured it out, I couldn't tell what was going on; now that I finished the book, I have no idea why the author did this- what positive effect was she looking for? But once I understood that, I was able to add my own quotation marks mentally, and the book got much better. It's mainly a biography of Vladimir Horowitz from the point of view of his young student and lover Nico Kaufmann. It's a sad story, captured so well, typical of what so many gay people endured before about 1990- self hatred, depression, marriages of convenience, dysfunctional family dynamics, etc. Vladimir Horowitz himself, considered one of the greatest piano virtuosos of the 20th century, was a tragic figure, not only a closeted and self-hating gay man, but a toxic narcissist who chose to chain himself to the dysfunctional narcissism of the Toscanini family. He is somewhat sympathetic at first, as he tries to form a meaningful bond with Nico Kaufmann, but it soon becomes clear that he has surrendered himself to the Toscaninis and public respectability; he could have at least divorced Wanda and lived a closeted life, but he chose to stick with her and her family's abuse. Nico is young and somewhat naive at first, and he was a rising pianist, but he should have read the writing on the wall and seen that Horowitz would never show him anything but disdain (a reflection of his self-hatred). The story of Kaufmann and Horowitz is decorated a bit by that of Reto Donati, who accompanies Kaufmann on a little road trip across Switzerland and listens to him recite his life and relations with Horowitz, but Donati's story doesn't make much sense and has several serious loose ends, which start in the mysterious first chapter and never go anywhere. A lot of the Kaufmann-Horowitz story is interesting and well-written, despite the missing punctuation, and I think that lovers of music and of the critical period in Europe as World War II is breaking out will find it enjoyable.

[user061219 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very cool story picked from the bones of a failed romance due to factors both within and outside of the control of the men involved. I don’t think it’s a stretch to compare it to Giovanni’s Room—but from a different angle. The writing style is a little dry at times but the overall impression has stuck with me.

[Caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’d rate this a 3.5. At times it was hard to follow with a lack of quotations, but overall a unique read. The author found unreleased letters from the well known pianist Vladimir Horowitz to his student Nico Kauffman and took liberties to describe their relationship and Horowitz time in Europe prior to WW2.

[Jane]

Ein kurzer modern geschriebener Roman über den Komponisten Horowitz und die Schwierigkeiten und Gefahren homosexuellen Begehrens im 20. Jahrhundert. Gut zu lesen und eine tolle Anregung mal wieder klassische Klaviermusik zu hören.

[Dubravka · Rating 5 out of 5]

I truly enjoyed reading this novel. Beautifully written.

[EllenZReads · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Piano Student is a novel based on letters written by Russian-born classical pianist Vladimir Horowitz to a young student, Nico Kaufmann. The story is told by a much older Nico in the 1980s to a somewhat random stranger who hears him playing piano. Nico describes his erratic student/teacher relationship with the older Horowitz, who was married to Toscanini's daughter, and insinuates that Horowitz was homosexual, despite his marriage to a woman, and that Horowitz and Nico had a brief, romantic relationship.

I did not enjoy this book. While I found the narrative of Horowitz's life interesting, I did not find either him or Nico to be particularly compelling or sympathetic characters and I didn't feel like there was much of a plot or real character development.

[Jean]

Kaufmann’s confession/auto narrative reflects the inevitable sordidness of a concealed love affair. Yet throughout its telling, Singer maintains an elegance and depth that will leave the reader pondering the nature of personal courage and how—or whether—life and maturity can ever bring into harmony art, ambition, and love.

More at Historical Novel Society review