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About the Author

Jessica Duchen writes for The Independent on classical music, opera and ballet, and during the past 25 years has interviewed many of the world’s finest musicians. Her first four novels (published by Hodder) have gathered a loyal fan-base and wide acclaim. “Duchen has a rare talent which is increasingly being recognised” (Gavin Esler, The Glasgow Herald).

Jessica grew up in London, read music at Cambridge, also studying piano, and felt torn at first between the prospects of a musical career and a literary one. Having decided to be “sensible” – perhaps a debatable point – and choose the latter, she held editorial posts on several music magazines before going freelance to concentrate on writing.

Her interest in cross-genre arts finds music playing a vital role in her novels as well as her journalism, and she frequently narrates concert versions of two of them, Alicia’s Gift and Hungarian Dances. She is currently writing an opera libretto for the composer Roxanna Panufnik, a commission from Garsington Opera for 2017.

Her output also includes two plays, biographies of the composers Erich Wolfgang Korngold and Gabriel Fauré (both published by Phaidon) and her popular classical music blog, JDCMB.

Jessica lives in London with her violinist husband and their two cats. She enjoys playing the piano, preferably when nobody can hear her, as well as cookery, long walks and plundering second-hand bookshops for out-of-print musical gems.

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The following people helped to make this book possible by sponsoring a character.

Jelly d’Arányi is kindly sponsored by Irmina Trynkos

Donald Francis Tovey is kindly sponsored by Steven Isserlis

Myra Hess is kindly sponsored by the Jersey Liberation International Music Festival

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Dear Reader,

The book you are holding came about in a rather different way to most others. It was funded directly by readers through a new website: Unbound.

Unbound is the creation of three writers. We started the company because we believed there had to be a better deal for both writers and readers. On the Unbound website, authors share the ideas for the books they want to write directly with readers. If enough of you support the book by pledging for it in advance, we produce a beautifully bound special subscribers’ edition and distribute a regular edition and e-book wherever books are sold, in shops and online.

This new way of publishing is actually a very old idea (Samuel Johnson funded his dictionary this way). We’re just using the internet to build each writer a network of patrons. Here, at the back of this book, you’ll find the names of all the people who made it happen.

Publishing in this way means readers are no longer just passive consumers of the books they buy, and authors are free to write the books they really want. They get a much fairer return too – half the profits their books generate, rather than a tiny percentage of the cover price.