A kind person in the US who subscribes to New Yorker magazine has alerted me to the fact that Women and the Piano is one of their selections in ‘What We’re Reading this Week – the best books out now, handpicked by our editors’ (Subscriber newsletter, 8 May 2024)

I love the New Yorker, so this is exciting.

The newsletter carries this brief review:

“Women and the Piano”
By Susan Tomes (Yale)
Nonfiction | In this engaging survey of fifty female pianists, from the eighteenth century to the present, Tomes aims to correct a male-centric understanding of piano history. Women pianists have long been scrutinized—for playing in a “masculine” style, for their appearances, for not orienting themselves around family. Through short biographies, Tomes documents the cost of pursuing art. Fanny Mendelssohn allowed her compositions to be published under her brother Felix’s name; Zhu Xiao-Mei continued studying Bach even after being sent to do manual labor during China’s Cultural Revolution. Yet the resounding note is one of passion. As Marguerite Long told her students, “My joy in life is work, because it will never betray you.”