A kind reader in the US (thank you Diana) has alerted me to the fact that my book Women and the Piano is one of Jeremy Denk’s choices in this week’s New Yorker magazine. New York pianist and writer Jeremy Denk was asked to recommend a few books that deal with the relationship between music and politics – ‘and hold them in tension’. I hadn’t thought of my book as dealing with politics, but I suppose it does in the sense that it deals with society’s beliefs about what certain people are and aren’t (or were and weren’t) allowed to do.
I have never met Jeremy Denk, but have admired him since, years ago, a friend sent me a few pages cut out of an issue of the New Yorker. Denk had written about his period of study in Indiana with the Hungarian piano professor György Sebök. I had studied with Sebök too, on various courses, but had considered his character too complex to sum up in writing. Jeremy Denk did an astounding job of it and inspired me to try and write about Sebök myself (which I did in the chapter called ‘Beethoven among the Alpine flowers’ in my book Speaking the Piano).
Here’s what Denk said about my latest book in the March 5, 2025 issue of the New Yorker:
‘This very charming book introduces you to fifty women pianists you’ve never thought enough about, but it’s also political. I was left heartbroken, particularly by the life of Lili Kraus, an incredible Hungarian-born pianist who ended up teaching in Fort Worth. There’s an amazing scene in which one of her students is playing a Beethoven concerto onstage, and she stops his performance to say, “I won’t have the audience think it’s supposed to sound that way.” An entire realm of talented pianists were not given enough ado and were sometimes sniffed at. It’s still woven into the fabric of the business. This book invites you to listen to all of these different voices, and it was a huge service in my thinking through the systemic problems that women pianists face today.’
https://www.newyorker.com/books/book-currents/jeremy-denks-musical-account-of-american-divisions
Quite right – such an important book!
Thanks, your post got me thinking about Fanny Mendelssohn. Her brother’s startling precocity is attested to by various contemporaries, but he said that Fanny had the greater talent. Great pianists have that power to shock us into feeling like we’re hearing a well-known sonata for the first time and I wish i had a time machine to be able to hear her play. I’m sure the experience would be unforgettable.
Thank you for this comment, James – I quite agree that it would have been wonderful to hear Fanny Mendelssohn play.