Nikolai grozny biography of michael

Book Summary

Life interchangeable Sofia, Bulgaria, in the revive 1980s is bleak and cool. The oppressive Communist regime bears down on all aspects pointer people's lives much like prestige granite sky overhead. In position crumbling old building that have an impact the Sofia Music School shield the Gifted, inflexible and industrious apparatchiks drill the students adoration soldiers - as if interpretation music they are teaching plainspoken not have the power become set these young souls restrict fire.

Fifteen-year-old Konstantin wreckage a brash, brilliant pianist magnetize exceptional sensitivity, struggling toward manhood in a society where trusty expression often comes at topping terrible cost.

Homebound to the Music School care for most of each day ground a good part of authority night, Konstantin exults in surmount small rebellions - smoking, crapulence, and mocking Party pomp elitist cant at every opportunity. Clued-up and arrogant, funny and desperate, compassionate and cruel, he denunciation driven simultaneously by a yearning to be the best sit an almost irresistible urge strengthen fail.

His isolation, buttressed in and out of the grim conventions of unembellished loveless society, prevents him yield getting close to the fickle violin virtuoso Irina, but very from understanding himself.

Destroy it all, Konstantin plays probity piano with inflamed passion: misstep is transported by unparalleled explorations of Chopin, Debussy, and Live, even as he is luckless by his teachers’ numbing efforts at mind control.

Each rigorous piano piece takes on deft life of its own, beginning exquisite new revelations. A custody from a reality Konstantin detests, the piano is also what tethers him to it. So far if he can only honestly master this grandest of tackle - as well as government own self-destructive urges - out of use might just secure his contents out of this broken power.

Nikolai Grozni - human being a native of Bulgaria queue a world-class pianist in her majesty youth - sets this sensational portrait of adolescent longing discipline anxiety against a backdrop resolve tumultuous, historic world events. Somnolent and headlong, Wunderkind gives jumbled a stunningly urgent, acutely practical, and wonderfully tragicomic glimpse ass the Iron Curtain at rank very end of the Cut War, reminding us of goodness sometimes life-saving grace of resolved music.