Teaser Tuesday - Oct 30

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

She is the music and the music is her. The piano is an extension of her. As she plays the sustained unaccompanied start of the slow movement, the mesmerised atmosphere deepens.

I felt it needed the extra sentence! This is a re-read of our book group book of next month (jumping the gun slightly!) - Jessica Duchen's Alicia's Gift a study of the stress of young musical genius - I last read it back in 2008 - and that's the Ravel piano concerto she's playing and on cue my music player's random play facility provides the music! And here it is:

Behind the makeup

A few weeks ago we attended a double bill at the Buxton festival of Luciano Berio's Recital I and George Benjamin's Little Hill. I'd never been to the Buxton Opera House before, it's a lovely little building a bit cramped but fits very nicely with that era of spas and opera going.
I don't think I'd heard the Berio work before - maybe performed on the radio by Cathy Berberian back in the 70's(?) - it was written for her in 1972 -as the preliminary write up said it is rarely heard - and a real tour-de-force by the soloist. The work tells of the reaction of the singer as she reacts to the events around a recital, her accompanist not turning up. The singer is instructed to include some works from her repertoire - so a typical Berio-ish 60's pastiche but moving in its portrayal of someone attempting to find her voice. Susan Bickley brought over the inner struggle of the performer wonderfully.
I'd not heard the Benjamin work before but I loved the sound world he conjoured up, the strings forming most of the sound. A retelling of the story of the pied piper. More than a dash of political corruption! Here's a review of the double bill from Snape.