Beautifully evoked in every way, this is the story of the forgotten Mozart: his charming, pretty, highly gifted musical sister Nannerl. Beginning in the backwater town of Salzburg in the early 1760's, the father of the family Leopold Mozart (who was a gifted composer himself), realized his six year old son Wolfgang and eleven year old daughter Nannerl were extraordinary musicians and toured them all over Europe to play before royalty and the elite. But the spirited, imaginative boy Wolfgang Mozart soon drew all the attention. Nannerl was a gifted keyboardist and he was a genius in performing and composition. For the rest of her long life she would live in his shadow.
As an 18th century woman, Nannerl could have made her way in music as a singer, but she was not a singer and thus her love of music, which she had shared with her little brother and which equaled his, largely lay frustrated within her. All the family energy went to further her brother's career, for as a man and a composer, he could one day support them well. But he grew up and away from his father's possessive hold and Nannerl went on to make her own life.
One so loves Nannerl in this sypathetic book as she tries gently to find who she is apart from her brilliant brother and domineering father. The Mozart family, friends and times are warmly, wonderfully drawn. She grows up, tries to find love and to compromise and still, even as her correspondance with her beloved brother who is now famous in Vienna draws to an end, she is determined to keep the music she shared with him as a child alive in her.
In the end this novel is not just for someone who wants to read about the Mozart family, but for any girl or young woman who ever struggled between adoration and envy of a brilliant brother and goes on loving him long after he has left her for a brighter life.
I am the author of the novel MARRYING MOZART (Viking Penguin).
