AN EVENING OF BRAHMS

by Richard Sennett ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 17, 1984

Alexander Hoffmann is a young Chicago-raised cellist studying in New York when he meets Susan Fields, the pianist in the chamber-music class they take with paternally wise Signor Grisi. Alexander is remarkably good, Susan much less so--merely adequate. Yet they're comfortable together, share an apartment after a while, marry--and try to deal with the discrepancies pulling out ever wider between Alexander's public life and the one Susan will never have. But finally, shortly after the marriage, after an argument. . . Susan is killed by a taxi. Sennett has tried to do something quite difficult here. On one level there's a portrait of the outward lives of musicians--agents, reputations, timing, etc. At the same time, however, Sennett weaves in deep, almost pedantic analyses of the music itself, pieces of music that serve as a kind of harmonic canopy of beauty above these musical lives. (Alexander, conducting an amateur group in Brahms' German Requiem, finds himself able to come to terms with the stages of mourning.) And this ambitious construct is often awkward. Sennett-the-novelist too frequently becomes Sennett-the-sociologist, with generalized observations. Alexander's early life is set out in satisfying detail, but his background is uncomfortably similar to that of the main character in Scott Spencer's Endless Love (Chicago communist parents, father leaving mother for a black woman). And some of the nearly free-standing music analyses can be very dry. (""The opening of the C minor piano quartet is a study in silence. The piano strikes C octaves and these fade away. The strings respond with a two-note figure. There is a rest, then the strings sigh and rest again."") Still, two excellent scenes help to balance things: Alexander's first public recital--at which, afterwards, he vomits convulsively over and into his cello; and a thematically linked scene of rehearsing and playing the Requiem imperfectly, even badly, where Alexander (in some very strong emotional prose) realizes the requirements of both faith and defilement. A half-successful novel at best, then, but this is fiction that's abundant in yearning intelligence, with a searching willingness to explore the complex connections between beautiful art and flawed, profane humanity.

Pub Date: May 17, 1984

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1984

Categories: FICTION