The Soloist

by Mark Salzman

Overview

As a child, Renne showed promise of becoming one of the world's greatest cellists. Now, years later, his life suddenly is altered by two events: he becomes a juror in a murder trial for the brutal killing of a Buddhist monk, and he takes on as a pupil a Korean boy whose brilliant musicianship reminds him of his own past.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780679759263
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/07/1995
Series:	Vintage Contemporaries
Edition description:	REPRINT
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.21(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Mark Salzman is the author of Iron & Silk, an account of his two years in China; Lost in Place, a memoir; and the novels The Laughing Sutra, The Soloist, and Lying Awake.

Editorial Reviews

Jury duty in a murder trial helps resolve a classical musician's deep professional crisis—in a haunting second novel from the author of The Laughing Sutra (1990) and Iron and Silk (1986), Salzman's acclaimed book (and later movie) about China. Cellist Reinhart (Renne) Sundheimer, the son of German Jews who fled to America, was once a child prodigy. After the war, his mother returned to Germany so he could study with world-famous cellist Johannes von Kempen, who had retired from the orchestra rather than endure false charges of Nazi sympathies. The ancient maestro, with his inspirational dignity, became the most important person in young Renne's life, softening its loneliness (no playmates, no girlfriends). Then, tragedy: at 18, a conjectural hearing problem drove Renne from the concert stage. When Salzman's story begins, Renne is 34, a cello teacher at UCLA, still a virgin, still grimly determined to concertize again. Two events reshape his identity. He becomes deeply involved in teaching a new prodigy, Kyung-hee, a nine-year-old Korean-American, and he serves as a juror in the trial of a Zen student accused of murdering his master. Salzman skillfully interweaves flashbacks with the nurturing of Kyung-hee and the story of the trial and its offshoot, a budding romance between Renne and fellow-juror Maria-Teresa, an attractive married woman. Renne's insecurity with women snuffs out the romance; then he finds himself the lone holdout for a guilty- but-insane verdict and the object of his fellow-jurors' contempt. Yet the two traumas cause Renne's regeneration as musician and as moral being: he sees the trial as "his graduate recital" for his old master, while he serenelyguides his young prot‚g‚ toward a brilliant future. Salzman's handling of his weighty theme—the passing of torches as the ennobling essence of civilization—is unfailingly light and delicate: this is lovely, offbeat movie material.

Kirkus Reviews

Renne Sundheimer gave his first professional cello performance before he was 10. However, his prodigious talent abandoned him when he was 18, and now, as a professor of music, he is tormented by the prospects of his life. As David Chandler begins the narrative, one believes it is his own life story. He maintains energy and vigor and no hint of tenderness; his unsentimental delivery allows listeners to grasp each scene and to color all the nuances for themselves. The very best outcome of Chandler’s straightforward manner is that we remember the music of the novel and its characters long after the last word. J.P. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine

OCT/NOV 06 - AudioFile