The Mozart Season

by Virginia Euwer Wolff

"Remember, what's down inside you, all covered up—the things of your soul. The important, secret things . . . The story of you, all buried, let the music caress it out into the open."

When Allegra was a little girl, she thought she would pick up her violin and it would sing for her—that the music was hidden inside her instrument.
Now that Allegra is twelve, she believes the music is in her fingers, and the summer after seventh grade she has to teach them well. She's the youngest contestant in the Ernest Bloch Young Musicians' Competition.
She knows she will learn the notes to the concerto, but what she doesn't realize is she'll also learn—how to close the gap between herself and Mozart to find the real music inside her heart.

The Mozart Season includes an interview with author Virginia Euwer Wolff.

Genres: Young Adult, Music, Fiction, Middle Grade, Contemporary, Childrens, Coming Of Age

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

On August 25th, Virginia Euwer Wolff was born in Portland, Oregon. Her family lived on an apple and pear orchard near Mount Hood. Her father died when she was five years old and she admits her childhood was pretty messed up, but she held things together with her violin. She graduated from Smith College. She raised a son and daughter before going back to teaching high school English.
She was almost fifty years old when she started writing children books. Virginia thought she might have one or two good books in her before the end but that was proven wrong. Today, she is no longer teaching, but writes full-time.

When Wolff was asked why she writes for kids and not grown-ups, She responded, "Because I don't think I have a handle on how to write for grown-ups. The grown-up publishing world is so fraught with one-upsmanship, scorn and snobbery. I did write an adult novel. Thank goodness it went out of print. I think we kids' authors still start out with hope every morning. We honor our audience."

Ms. Wolff has received many awards for her works, which include the Golden Kite Award for Fiction for her book Make Lemonade, the ALA Notable Book for Children for The Mozart Season and many, many others.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/virgin...

Reviews

[Ruhee]

I picked this book up from a sale at my elementary school when I was eleven, mostly because I was a musician and it was a book about a girl who was a musician. Since then, I've read it at least once a year. I don't even know if I've told anyone about it, just because it has come to be so special to me, and I'm kind of afraid if I start talking about it with someone else it will change the book. But there you have it; a little book for young adults, written beautifully, with all kinds of little nuggets of wisdom in its pages. If I had to get rid of my whole collection, I'd find a way to keep this somehow.

[Kailey (Luminous Libro) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Allegra is a violinist entering a prestigious Mozart music competition. At 12 years of age, she is the youngest finalist in the competition, and works closely with her violin teacher to be prepared. But as she memorizes the Mozart concerto, other things in her life begin to affect her music.
Her mother's emotionally wounded friend, Deirdre, who is a genius vocalist, makes Allegra wonder about how pain can find a voice through music. Allegra's grandmother, who escaped the Nazi death camps, urges Allegra to embrace her Jewish heritage, and Allegra reflects on her identity as a musician. And there is a mysterious homeless man who haunts all the local concerts in the park, dancing by himself in the back and searching for a song he can't remember.

As a musician, I enjoyed this story so much. The writing is quite accurate about how one feels about learning music, and embracing it, and connecting with the composers; how you can make yourself crazy practicing too much, how your nerves will go haywire before or after a performance, how music shapes everything you do and everything you are.

I was immediately drawn into the story, because the first scene is a music lesson with Allegra's teacher, and I was reminded of myself as a music teacher, urging my students to practice, trying to inspire them to believe in themselves and feel the music as a part of themselves. I saw myself in the story, both as Allegra, remembering when I was a young piano student, and as Allegra's teacher, as I am now, passing on my love of music to my students.

The very best part of this book was Allegra's relationship with her music teacher and her parents. They are such lovely authority figures in her life, ready to guide and listen and comfort, but also giving her the space to figure things out for herself and stretch her wings.

I really loved finding a kindred voice in this little girl musician, wrestling with her family identity, wrestling with Mozart, wrestling with ideas in her head. She is always looking for connections between the elements of her life, and she revolves those thoughts around in her mind over and over again until she sees their meaning. She's incredibly sensitive, as all good musicians are, and everything she sees and hears makes a deep impact on her.

My one suggestion would be to include a glossary for the musical terms that non-musicians wouldn't know. Or read along with a dictionary close by.

As I was reading, I would stop and look up recordings of the various classical songs that are mentioned. And I listened to Allegra's main song for competition, Mozart Concert No. 4 in D, over and over as I read. (The recording I listened to was with Hilary Hahn as the violinist.) It really enhanced the story to be able to hear the nuances of the pieces.

"Talking about music is like dancing about architecture." And yet this book does a wonderful job of describing music, how musicians feel, and how audiences respond at performances. Beautiful from beginning to end!

[Tracy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This story is slow and contemplative. The beginning was a bit odd and almost too slow, but by the end I was completely absorbed and utterly satisfied.

The book caught my attention because it is about a 12 year old girl who plays both softball and the violin. I have an almost-12 year old daughter who does both of those things, too, so I picked it up to see if it would interest her. The book was published in 1991, so the voice may not be modern or exciting enough to engage today's youth. I will recommend it to my daughter, and I'll probably even buy a copy to have on our shelves, but she will probably not stick with it.

One thing I deeply appreciated in this story was the fact that even though this 12 year old girl is an immensely talented violinist, possibly even a prodigy, her parents and her violin teacher are completely relaxed about the whole thing. There is no carrying on about her gift, or her obligations; they encourage her to play because she loves it, they encourage her to enjoy it. They let her make her own decisions about where this gift is going to take her.

[Hanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book had a young violinist learning her place in the world over the course of a summer, i.e., all of my favorite things in a book. The story covers her story over the course of a summer, where she is getting ready to play a competition. On the surface, it appears really very simple, but it really is the impact of subtleties of everyday life that make this story so significant.

The story is told from a child's perspective, and I think it was really well done: the author really captured the essence of what a child would notice and think about after an experience, and I just really loved how the story was told. It covered aspects of growing up, of friendship, of learning more about the nuance within life. It didn't quite make me cry but it did make me think.

As a musician, I loved how carefully everyone in the book talked about the craft: Allegra, her music teacher, her parents, etc. Music is often a really toxic community and I really liked how none of the adults pressured her into doing anything she didn't want her to, even if she didn't realize that. It was one of the books that made me really want to practice my instrument after finishing it, which always means it's a really good book haha.

Overall, I really loved this book! It's not everyone's cup of tea but it was perfect for me & I really liked it. Wasn't 5 stars bc it could have been stronger.

[Alex F_E2 · Rating 5 out of 5]

All about a music person's life during the summer, this book was extraordinary. This book tells you a lot of what happens when you go on a music person's life with a music family.

Studying for a competition is hard, and this book explains it why. What happens when you get into the finals of a competition? This book explains it why. And it's all in a kid's view.

Some people might not like it, some people might think " Oh my god, this is crazy! I'm never going to study music!" But the only people who loves music and like hearing music will enjoy this book.

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my very favorite novels in the world. I've read this at least once a year since I first discovered it 16 years ago. A wonderful book about family, music, and the (sometimes painful) reality of making our dreams come true.

[lily (taylor’s version)🇵🇸 · Rating 5 out of 5]

i was in like fourth grade when i read this. i didn’t play an instrument then, and have yet to years later, but this book sparked my interest in the violin. i recently decided that i wanted to learn the violin, and am waiting to start my lessons in january. while i don’t remember much of this book, i do remember that it greatly influenced me and still is.

[Int'l librarian · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book dances and sings, even as the characters mourn for lost music, and lost lives. 12-year-old Leah is a prodigy, the youngest finalist in a prestigious violin competition. She’s very mature – at times she seems a better fit for graduate school than middle school – but she still has a young girl’s dreams and inspirations, along with an eye and ear for all the distracting details that wedge themselves into her day.

I like the asides of music history: André Previn writing for Itzhak Perlman’s baby, Ernest Chausson biking into a stone wall. And the letter from Bubbe Raisa is a lyric tragedy.

Thankfully, Wolff’s dominant tones are joyous and beautiful. This book makes me happy to feel whatever there is to feel, happy to be alive.

[Sabrina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una bellissima storia di una giovane ragazza che decide di partecipare a una competizione col suo violino. Non imparerà solamente a suonare il concerto numero 4 di Mozart, avrà anche a che fare con molti altri lati della sua giovane vita, come la scoperta delle sue origini e la comprensione del suo essere un ibrido tra due culture, accettando lungo il percorso gli strani modi di comportarsi di molti adulti con cui avrà a che fare.

[Anita · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have two kiddos who've played violin for about a dozen years, so reading this was...interesting.

Mainly, it made me really glad my two were much older when they tackled Mozart and never did a competition like this, just because of some of the unrealistic pressures put on the main character, Allegra. Both her parents are string players. Even her name, allegro, is an Italian music term, meaning fast and lively. Throughout the book she refers to her parents as Mommy and Daddy, and that, more than anything else, really emphasized her young age and was heartbreaking.

Allegra sends in an audition tape for the Bloch Competition, and discovers she's the youngest finalist. She commits to practicing for the competition for an entire summer, and the story is about how she does this, with the help (or hindrance, you'll see -- it's in part how she interprets his instructions) of her teacher.

But complicating things is a singer with bipolar disorder (and who lost a child and her husband as a result) who comes to visit Allegra's parents while performing. The woman has a couple of episodes with Allegra in attendance, and Allegra struggles to process what she's seeing in addition to her music.

As the pressure mounts, Allegra mounts her bike -- going for secret, midnight rides around their neighborhood.

The finalists kinda figure out who each other are by listening / hearing each other play the competition piece in the silent moments between practices with the local youth orchestra. And Allegra fills in for one finalist, when the girl breaks her wrists/ hands in an accident.

They're all thrown together for a radio interview, and get trapped on the elevator on the way down right before the big performance and...

I won't spoil how it ends. The ending was appropriate.

What I did feel was missing were the hours and hours of practice the girl had to have done. They're mentioned, but in passing, and it give the impression, on some pages, of skimming over practice. Practicing is perhaps the hardest part of learning a string instrument, the part that all kids rebel against and resist.

This is an interesting read for any string players in your family, or even if you're just interested in finding out what a life as a musician would be like. Books are windows and mirrors, and this is a wide open window.

Enjoy!

Visit my blog for more great middle grade book recommendations, free teaching materials and fiction writing tips: https://amb.mystrikingly.com/

[Maja · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book that is about one extremely specific thing (playing the Mozart Concerto No.4 in D Major) but also about life and death and everything else. Our protagonist Allegra is 12 and has just decided to participate in a competition where six young players are doing the piece. She knows that she will be spending her whole summer practising the piece several hours a day. Her teacher tells her that most of the work will be trying to find a way to make the piece her own, and that is what she does. The beauty of the book is not only that it takes the reader completely into Allegra's world and view, but also how it shows that everything that happens to her this summer, all the big and small and beautiful and terrible moments, all small and large embarrassments and hopes, they're all little pieces she assembles to put them back into her music. It's a book that has a very finely honed sense both for how it feels to be a child where things feel big and beautiful and change all the time, and also for the fact that even twelve-year-olds who are learning words like "annihilate" and "empathy" for the first time already struggle with and understand the fundamental questions that even adults are still asking themselves. I loved it a lot and I cried while reading it. At the same time, I am not sure it is a book I could reread. Like Allegra playing the concerto in one big moment and then moving on, it is one specific reading experience that will stay with me as one moment in time.

[Lauren Rochford · Rating 5 out of 5]

A bit of childhood nostalgia, I probably read this 50 times in middle school. Let me tell you, it really holds up! What an incredible writer and a beautiful, intricate story. I finished it last night and spent all morning listening to the music the protagonist plays throughout the story. I also spent some time researching Mozart. Fun fact: dude was really into scatological humor. Anyway, read this masterpiece and rock out to Mozart.

[Lydia · Rating 2 out of 5]

The plot was boring and I didn't like the writing style. I had high hopes because the cover is so pretty, but this book disappointed me. Although, the ending was okay.

[Jan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this!!

[Phoebe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though this novel begins slowly, it is a beautifully written effort that really wows. Allegra Shapiro looks forward to the summer after 7th grade, since softball is over and she can get back to concentrating on violin. Then her music teacher tells her that she is a finalist (and the youngest one) in the Bloch competition for young musicians, which will be held in September. This staggering news colors Allegra's life from then on, and the transformations she goes through during the summer, in response to a variety of events, are marvelously voiced in her clear, intelligent way. Everything she experiences that summer feeds into her final interpretation of the piece she must play for the competition (Mozart's Fourth Concerto in D). She is only 12, and brilliant, but also very normal, and kids should warm to her. I loved the way Wolff writes about music, despite some technicality, and about life, and family, and the people who have gone before. This is an extraordinary, masterful novel and I don't know why it was skipped for any Newbery mention back in 1992. Junior high, up.

[Hailey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Again, a book I chose to read for my Humanities class. They all seem to be the same: the beginning irritates me, and barely manages to hold my attention, but by the end I'm crying and smiling about the way it has progressed. This story is about a girl Allegra Shapiro and her summer journey through training for a violin competition. It definitely made me want to pick up my flute, or sax, or guitar, or even plunk away at the piano. I found I could relate by the end when she finally decides to play the competition "for her grandmother". I can't think of a time I step on stage, or play any form of music that I don't think of my Grandparents. Both my great-grandmother, and my grandma. It's a very sweet book, and I quite liked it. =]

[Shauna Edwards · Rating 5 out of 5]

Allegra is a talented musician. She’s played the violin for several years and plays very well. She is selected to be a finalist in the Bloch Competition, but just playing notes won’t get her first prize. Allegra has to realize that the music is not in her fingers, but inside her heart.

I was able to relate to Allegra. I understood her struggles because I had the same problem a few years ago. I believed the music was in my fingers and that’s how I played. Eventually, I realized that I had to reach into my own heart, find the music, and allow to flow out.

I would recommend this book to young musicians. They would certianly appreciate it more and be able to relate to Allegra's struggles. I truly enjoyed this book!

[Cassandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

I ended up with some Really Complicated feelings about The Mozart Season. It does some things really, really well and movingly (that feeling of being twelve years old and sort of an adult and sort of a little kid, and the strange nostalgia waves that crash over you when you remember being an actual little kid) and a few other things very clunkily. (There's some weird race/body-shamey/class stuff that's just handled weirdly and I'm not sufficiently articulate to go beyond that.)

Very well-paced and engaging, though.

[Marvin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A YA novel that I & my daughters loved: An extraordinary novel with some stream-of-consciousness writing that the girls could identify with, and with constantly surprising twists in a simple plot--a girl prepares to play in a violin competition)--and with positive, though not idealized, relationships among kids & adults, all delivered in a tone that was not patronizing, but assumed kids' interest in cultural matters.

[Katie Marie · Rating 2 out of 5]

A thoughtful book- this is the story of a 12-year-old girl who gets entered into a violin competition and spends her whole summer preparing for the competition.

I have to be honest; I started this book in January 2012 and I've only now finished it (2 years later). The story was slow at times and I had a hard time getting back into the story each time I set my book down.

Overall? A nice, thoughtful book; but not one of my favorites.

[elissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I still have an ARC of this that I got at the first ALA that I went to as a librarian (Atlanta in 1991--I had also been to Dallas in 1989, when I was in library school). It was the 2nd Wolff book that I read, and I loved it. Not sure why I've not remembered to add this to my list of books until now.

[Georgiana 1792 · Rating 4 out of 5]

E mentre lo leggete, ascoltate la colonna sonora!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ls8-p...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYmtUh...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zdSJNr...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Hqyxy...

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my best-loved books. I bought it at a book fair in junior high (maybe middle school) and I have to be careful when I read it so it doesn't fall apart. This is a wonderful story for anyone who loves music. Allegra is such a great character!

[mereduck · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had a sudden, overwhelming urge to re-read this YA novel from my adolescence the other day, and managed to grab one of only two copies in the entire Toronto Public Library system (with a cover so atrocious its unpopularity is no wonder — the Henry Holt & Company edition).

The last time I read this book, Google barely existed, Youtube certainly didn’t, and a recording of Sophie Mutter’s 7:21 duration rendition of the third movement of Mozart’s Fourth Concerto in D was so laughably inaccessible to me that I just imagined some generic “classical music” in my head based on what I heard in ballet class. Now, I can listen to the music that functions as the backbone of our protagonist Allegra’s life! (I made a playlist on Idagio!) It’s so cool!

Anyway, I think this is a lovely read. I wonder if it’s maybe one of the first in my reading history that cemented a particular love for novels where you are tumbling around in a narrator’s head with their messy thoughts, jumping from topic to topic in a manner that reflects how being alive and sentient feels to me. Perhaps you are talking to a beloved mentor, but you’re also caught up in studying a long-memorized pattern in the carpeting, and you’re half-aware of some back-burner emotional excitement about seeing your school friends later, and you also have a passing existential thought about your genealogical place in history and how slim the probability margins are for your own existence. There is room for all that and more (a full-page oatmeal recipe — why not?) inside a person’s head after all.

Sure, there are a few cultural hiccups that I’ll chalk up to the early-90s era. And Allegra is so ridiculously precocious that it’s best not to think about her actual age too hard. But, for a YA book about a kid figuring out how to live in the world of messy adult lives and traumas with openness and empathy, it has such a light touch, and I found it quite poignant.

[Stephanie Pieck · Rating 4 out of 5]

Allegra Shapiro is 12. She's just finished school and the softball season. She's at a violin lesson and her teacher tells her that she's been chosen as a finalist in a prestigious music competition for young people. He asks her if she wants to spend her summer preparing for the finals. If she says yes, she'll spend every day working on a Mozart concerto. Allegra's two best friends are off having their own exciting summers--one at a ballet camp, the other visiting China. How would spending a summer at home practicing Mozart measure up to that?
Allegra decides to play the concerto, and this novel follows her progress through the summer--outdoor concerts, visits from musical friends of her parents, working as a page-turner for other musicians, and the mystery of a man who comes to concerts in parks and dances.
The author has managed to perfectly capture the strange in-between world of a 12-year-old girl who still calls her parents Mommy and Daddy but has enough maturity to discuss the finer nuances of violin-playing. As a beginning violinist myself preparing for my own recital, I found a lot of this book very revelant and helpful. I'm definitely not playing a Mozart concerto, but the mental preparation for playing in front of an audience for an extended period is the same.
A well-executed performance by the author. I wish we could have an encore to find out what happens to Allegra after the story of this novel ends.

[Gayle Vegter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, what a great book! I literally picked it up at Goodwill on a whim (what book cover has ever pulled you in?) but sometimes those are the best picks. It’s sort of a coming-of-age book about a 12-yr old girl preparing for a musical competition. The writing is very detailed about her music/instrument etc, but any musician can appreciate it, I think. I have never played in a group with a string section, so I learned a lot! But more than that it’s about family, friends and the connections we make to strangers. It’s about empathy and there are some beautiful passages.

Here’s one: After her parents find out she’s been riding her bike to the park in the middle of the night, there’s a big family fight and she discovers some secret traumas that have happened in the past. Afterward her father says to her, “Whether everything has to be a matter of life and death…The evidence is right here, right now. Suffering and joy. That’s all there is. There isn’t anything else. And they’re so close together… they’re so close it strikes terror into the human soul.”

Some really neat insights and some great characters.

Spoiler: after wondering about the other competitors in the competition all summer, she gets stuck in an elevator with them for a while the day before. The next morning, It’s cool to see how just as she’s preparing herself for the competition, she can imagine all the others preparing as well. (Eating cereal in their PJs perhaps 🤔)

[Padmin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Allegra Leah Shapiro ha dodici anni e suona il violino con straordinaria maestria, tanto da essere ammessa alle finali di un importante concorso per giovani musicisti dell'Oregon. Per tutte le vacanze estive vivrà in simbiosi con Mozart e la sua vita cambierà radicalmente. Grazie a Mozart imparerà a conoscere meglio gli amici, se stessa e le proprie radici "per metà ebree e per metà Gentili", in particolare attraverso il ricordo di una bisnonna, morta nel lager di Treblinka. E sarà a quella giovane donna mai conosciuta che "la ragazza col violino" dedicherà il suo concerto.
............................
Un bel libro per ragazzi con un protagonista d'eccezione: il concerto n. 4 di Mozart. Non so quanto abbia "venduto": in Italia -il paese del bel canto, del melodramma, dei mandolini e dei festivaldisanremo- la cultura e l'insegnamento sistematico della musica sono considerati stramberie per eccentrici. I vari ministri succedutisi sullo scranno più alto del Ministero della P.I., sul piano delle dichiarazioni, hanno ovviamente sempre negato questa condizione di inferiorità/estraneità, promettendo nel contempo nuove "riforme" e maggiori attenzioni. Mai attuate. Come dire: cambiano i suonatori, ma la musica rimane la stessa (e non è, purtroppo, quella di Mozart).

[charlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

i discovered this book on my bookshelf as a child and i still don't know where it came from! i think i was in the third or fourth grade (8-9 yo) when i first read it and the only opinion i had then was like "wow this author really knows classical music, huh." i read it a second time a few years later and this time it sucked me right in - the characters were real and diverse and likable, the setting was vivid, the writing style is simplistic but atmospheric, and once again i was struck by the author's love for music. the themes of self-discovery and cultural identity are explored beautifully through allegra's relationship with her violin and with mozart. i'm much older now but i still come back to it every few years because it's such a personal and memorable story. my memory is fuzzy so it's probably not a perfect story, but it's very special to me. of course, my taste isn't universal - i'd recommend it to anyone who loves playing their instrument and doesn't mind a book that takes its time, ghibli-style.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful middle grade book written in 1991 by an author who writes what she knows! Allegra is a twelve year old violinist who finds herself vying for first prize in the second annual Ernest Bloch Young Musicians' Competition in her hometown of Portland, Oregon. A member of a musically and artistically talented family, Allegra spends her twelfth summer endlessly practicing Mozart's Fourth Violin Concerto for the competition on Labor Day. In addition, real life hinders and helps her along and she becomes aware of all of the connections in her life and the lives of all of the people around her, those nearest and dearest to her as well as those long gone and those who will play a large role in her immediate and distant future.

It is such a pleasure to read a book a little out of the mainstream, written by an author (also a violinist) who genuinely wants to share her passion for music and educate her readers in something likely unfamiliar to many readers. I'm very glad I crossed paths with this lovely gem of a book.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

Debated between one and two stars. Went with two since the book had two loving parents who were not dead, incapacitated, incapable, incompetent, or otherwise unavailable to their kids--unusual in youth literature. Otherwise, my girls and I struggled to connect with this book at all. The basic story line was ultimately very simple with a number of underdeveloped plot threads that spiraled around in long-winded paragraphs here and there but never really amounted to much other than reappearing at the end of the book. There was sooooo much detail and many mental wanderings on the part of the main character. It got to where one of my daughters would groan whenever I pulled the book out and I began skipping whole paragraphs just to get through the long chapters. There were cheers of relief when we finished. Not planning on picking this one up again.