DUET WITH NICKY

Entertaining, extremely personal reading, this biography of composer-violinist Bereowsky, as written by his American wife. She traces his early years in Russia, his arrival in America, the development of his career. Their meeting and marriage colored by the jitters and the fevers of a musician's life; then travel and study in Europe, -- Germany, England, France, Switzerland, with and without their baby. The radio and orchestras and the leaders they knew; the problems of unions; the difficulty of a new composer finding a hearing; -- amusing stories of their non-professional life, of the devotion of a French electrician , of a drunken butler and a superb cook, of the contretemp in which their baby lands them. There are intimate pictures of famous conductors, musicians, of a girl with a voice; there are comments on the international scene, fealings touched upon in their travels; there are the economic problems of an artist's life, the effect of the war on the musical world. Delightful -- refreshing -- strikes a fresh note in career biography. Good escape.