Not necessarily because they were exceptional instruments. Sometimes quite the opposite! We remember the piano in a childhood home, the battered upright in a school music room, a particularly lovely grand encountered at a teacher’s house, an instrument played in a concert hall, or a piano discovered unexpectedly somewhere far from home. We remember their touch and sound, the peculiarities of their actions, even the smell of the room in which they stood. And sometimes we remember them because of the people who played them before us.
The piano is a machine, but it usually has a soul, and a history too. My 1913 C. Bechstein Model A is redolent of Edwardian drawing rooms. It may well have been sold from the Bechstein piano showroom on Wigmore Street, next door to Bechstein – now Wigmore – Hall, in that golden year when a carefree generation was teetering on the abyss of the First World War. I acquired it in 2013, exactly a century after it was made, a coincidence which seemed especially serendipitous and significant, given the subject matter of the novel I had begun writing some ten years earlier.
Some years ago, I played a Steinway D with a special heritage. Formerly owned by the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester, it had been played by Sviatoslav Richter and Daniel Barenboim, amongst others. “And now you are playing it!” said its owner, for whose music society I was performing. I’ve also played a square piano owned and autographed by Edward Elgar, a Pleyel said to have been played by Chopin, and an extraordinary ‘Maori’ Steinway, which had belonged to the pianist Lili Kraus. There is a danger, of course, that one can invest too much in these associations, imagining that something of former owners and players remains in the keys and strings and might somehow influence the next person who sits down to play. In reality, it is the pianist at the keyboard now who ignites the soul of the instrument and brings it to life in sound.
Given that Theo Browne, the principal character in my novel Facing the Music, is an ambitious young concert pianist, it was inevitable that pianos would feature prominently in the narrative. Theo encounters a succession of pianos as his life unfolds, each one marking a particular stage in his musical and emotional development. Later in the book, those same instruments become repositories of memory, bound to the people, places and experiences that have shaped him, so that a piano is never simply a piano, but a connection to an earlier period or version of his life.
There is his mother’s Pleyel, the piano of childhood and his earliest encounters with the instrument which will come to define him. Before there is ambition, career or even any real conception of himself as a musician, there is simply the fascination of the keyboard and the discovery of music.
At school there is a Blüthner, an instrument which becomes associated with two of the defining relationships of Theo’s musical life. Here he studies with Mr Hines, whose influence will extend far beyond piano lessons, and here too his deep friendship and musical partnership with violinist Jonathan Lane-Fox begins to take shape – a partnership which lies at the heart of the novel. Teacher and friend offer Theo different kinds of musical companionship: Mr Hines guides and challenges him, while with Jonathan he discovers the particular intimacy of making music with another person.
At Mr Hines’s home in Battersea stands his Broadwood, the piano on which Theo practises Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto, with Mr Hines beside him at the second piano, taking the orchestral reduction. The scene is charged with ambition: this is the repertoire Theo hopes will belong to his future, music of the international concert platform and the career he is beginning to imagine for himself. But the Broadwood also becomes deeply bound up with Theo’s memories of his beloved teacher, and of the musical life they shared. As the novel unfolds, it acquires a significance that reaches beyond the instrument itself.
Sir Ralph Kaufman’s Steinway has a history which long predates Theo’s first encounter with it. It belonged to Ralph’s father, Jakob, a concert pianist from Vienna, and carries with it the traces of a musical life from an earlier generation. When Theo first sits down at it, he is intimidated by its pedigree and by everything it seems to represent: “This was no ordinary instrument. It was a witness. It had travelled, and it had lived.” But as Theo’s relationship with the Kaufman family deepens, so too does his relationship with the Steinway. Gradually it acquires another layer of associations, becoming a repository not only for the Kaufman family’s musical past, but for Theo’s own memories and experiences.
And then comes the C. Bechstein concert grand at Bechstein (now Wigmore) Hall. For Theo, sitting at that piano represents arrival: the concert platform at a prestigious London venue, an audience, and the beginning of the career towards which he has been working for years.
Later, in France, Theo, now an Army officer, encounters a very different instrument: a dilapidated Érard in a château where his battalion is billeted. By then, a piano means something quite different. It is no longer primarily an instrument of ambition or professional advancement. In surroundings unimaginably distant from concert halls and daily practice, the mere presence of a keyboard offers a connection with another life.
I love the physical presence of the piano – from a domestic upright to the grandest Steinway D – as much a piece of furniture as an instrument from which to conjure sound. I love the piano’s complexity, and the way it always seems to invite us to touch it. Put a piano in a public place and people are drawn to it: they will sit down and play, while even those who cannot play are tempted to press the keys, curious to hear the sound they can make. And a piano invites repeated physical contact. Hands have pressed its keys thousands, perhaps millions, of times. Someone practised scales on it, someone struggled with a Beethoven sonata, someone played for a teacher, accompanied a friend, prepared for a concert, played badly, played wonderfully, or simply sat down one evening and played for pleasure.
Perhaps pianos do not remember us at all. My Bechstein keeps its first hundred years of history to itself. We are the ones who supply the memories. We attach people, places, pieces of music and particular periods of our lives to these complicated machines of wood and felt, wire and iron. Yet the moment someone sits at the keyboard, the machine becomes something else. It sounds, responds, resists, sings – and another memory begins.
Which pianos do you remember?
Not necessarily the finest one you have ever played, but the instrument that has stayed with you: your childhood piano, your teacher’s grand, the terrible upright in the school practice room, a concert instrument you were reluctant to leave, or a piano with a history that made you think differently as you placed your hands on its keys.
Leave a comment below or contact me with your piano memories.
Facing the Music is out now in paperback and eBook. Find out more
The new season of Chamber Music Weymouth is a particularly special one. Not only will the 2026/27 Season mark the bicentenary of the death of Ludwig van Beethoven, and the centenary of the birth of composer John Joubert, it is the concert series’ 25th anniversary.
Founded in 2002 by concert pianist and long-time Weymouth resident Duncan Honeybourne, Chamber Music Weymouth – formerly Weymouth Lunchtime Chamber Concerts – has become one of Dorset’s most successful and popular classical music series. Created with the simple aim of bringing first-class live chamber music to the heart of Weymouth, the series has remained true to its founding principles: supporting outstanding young musicians alongside distinguished established artists, presenting imaginative programmes that combine familiar masterpieces with lesser-known or rarely-performed repertoire, and offering audiences a friendly, welcoming atmosphere.
The concerts take place at St Mary’s Church in the heart of Weymouth, where its fine acoustics and excellent Yamaha grand piano create an ideal setting for chamber music. The monthly lunchtime concerts have earned a loyal following while maintaining affordable ticket prices and an informal atmosphere in which performers introduce their music and engage directly with listeners.
The series has welcomed many leading musicians during its history while also giving countless young artists invaluable opportunities. In 2024, the organisation adopted the new name Chamber Music Weymouth, reflecting an expanded vision that includes a Sunday afternoon series and Young Artist Showcase events to provide young musicians with valuable performance experience.
The 2026/27 season marks a particularly significant milestone: the 25th anniversary season of the concert series. Twenty-five years after Duncan Honeybourne gave the inaugural concert at Weymouth Arts Centre, Chamber Music Weymouth continues to flourish, bringing internationally acclaimed performers and emerging talent to the Jurassic Coast. The anniversary celebrates not only a quarter of a century of exceptional music-making but also the dedication of the artists, volunteers, supporters and audiences who have helped establish the series as an important part of Dorset’s cultural life. In 2026 the organisation’s contribution was further recognised with the Weymouth Civic Society Arts Award, underlining its lasting impact on the region’s musical landscape.
Pianist and Artistic Director Duncan Honeybourne says, “When I launched Chamber Music Weymouth in the summer of 2002, I couldn’t have imagined the vibrant, enjoyable and life-affirming journey it would take me on, nor that it would be flourishing and going from strength to strength a quarter of a century later! I’m immensely proud that this concert series has built a loyal regular audience, attracted some very distinguished performers to South Dorset and promoted innumerable young artists at an early stage in their careers. Far from resting on our laurels, we are bursting with future plans and exciting ventures, and I can’t wait to take our loyal and lovely audience along on the enriching and stimulating ride.”
Concerts Manager Frances Wilson says, “I have been involved with Chamber Music Weymouth since 2019. It is such a pleasure to bring high-quality live music and remarkable musicians to our stretch of the Jurassic Coast, and we are looking forward to the next 25 years (!) with great enthusiasm, with a number of exciting developments planned to extend our musical activities beyond the lunchtime series.”
The new season of Chamber Music Weymouth concerts opens on Wednesday 23rd September with a recital by Duncan Honeybourne. Tickets are available online in advance or on the door – a bargain at just £5 for world-class classical music in the heart of Weymouth.
Around 20 years ago, I caught the first movement of his ‘Spring’ Sonata for violin and piano on Radio 3 one morning, and was struck by the freshness and optimism of its opening theme. There is something wonderfully youthful about this music: an openness, an eagerness, a sense of possibility, as if everything still lies ahead.
The other spark for the book was my rediscovery of live music, after a period when I was occupied with looking after my young son, in particular via good friend who was a regular at London’s Wigmore Hall. I developed a deep affection for that venue and grew more and more interested in its history, together with a fascination with the people who make music and the particular intensity of live performance. This was some years before I started my blog The Cross-Eyed Pianist, but even then I was interested in what it means to bea musician, though my notion of artistic identity was at that time rather vague. I also wanted to write about music from the point of view of a practising musician as well as a listener, and to explore both the physical and emotional experience of playing certain pieces.
From there, an idea for a book began to emerge featuring two gifted young musicians – a pianist and a violinist. I imagined them playing the ‘Spring’ Sonata together, and gradually their musical partnership became a friendship stretching back to their schooldays. They were talented and ambitious, young people for whom music was not simply something they did but an essential part of who they were. So I started to write and found a narrative emerged surprisingly easily…
I started playing the piano seriously again in 2008, after an absence of some 20 years, and the novel, by now around 180,000 words (!), was set aside as I found an outlet for my writing through this blog and concert reviewing. Over the past 16 years, the many encounters and conversations I’ve had with musicians through concert attending and reviewing, the Meet the Artist interview series, and this site has given me an increasingly rich insight into the musician’s life: the importance of teachers, mentors and colleagues, the routines of practice, the deep preparation and exhilaration of performance, the doubts and disappointments, and the extent to which being a musician is not simply a profession but an identity.
A conversation with a good friend in Spring 2026 and the publication of a new history of the Wigmore Hall set me thinking about those 180,000 words which were lying dormant on a hard drive or memory stick somewhere in my home. At first, I couldn’t locate the files and I convinced myself they were gone for good, and that it didn’t really matter…. But when I did eventually find them again and I started to read the text, I felt there was something worth revising.
Facing the Music follows the activities of two young musicians: Theo Browne, a pianist, and Jonathan Lane-Fox, a violinist. I imagined them in London in the summer of 1914, talented, ambitious and standing on the threshold of successful professional careers. They have been friends since school and their friendship has been forged, above all, through making music together, the ‘Spring’ sonata being their ‘signature piece’. They understand one another through music in ways they cannot always express in words. And then I began to wonder what would happen if music were taken away from them…
I’ve been fascinated by the First World War and its literature since my teens, and have visited the Somme battlefields several times. But I didn’t want to write a conventional war novel. Rather, the war offered an extreme version of something that has come to interest me greatly: what happens when circumstances over which we have little or no control disrupt the life we thought we were going to lead.
This became particularly resonant during the Covid pandemic. In conversations with professional musicians during the lockdowns, I was struck by the sense of dislocation many experienced when concerts and live music disappeared. At first, some welcomed an unexpected period in which to rest, practise without the pressure of engagements, and learn new repertoire. But as the months passed, without the focus of concerts, for many musicians spare time became an affliction rather than a gratification, and they felt bereft without the opportunity to perform and share their music with live audiences. For someone whose sense of self is so closely bound up with making and sharing music, being unable to do so can feel like losing part of one’s identity. That idea found its way into Facing the Music, though in very different circumstances.
Music is therefore not simply a backdrop to the novel. It is embedded in the lives of its characters. Beethoven, Brahms, Rachmaninoff, Bach, Schubert and others accompany Theo and Jonathan through the narrative, and certain works acquire different meanings as their lives change. Music becomes a repository for memory: of people, places, friendships and former selves.
The other important landscape of the novel is Dorset, a county I have been associated with for nearly forty years through my husband and his family – and is now my home. The cliffs, beaches and open skies of the area around Studland and the Isle of Purbeck provide a counterweight to London and, later, the Western Front. For Theo in particular, Dorset represents freedom, sanctuary and continuity – a place to which he can return both physically and in memory.
At the centre of everything, however, is the deep platonic friendship between Theo and Jonathan. Their relationship stretches from schoolboy music-making through youthful ambition and into experiences neither could have anticipated. It is affectionate, occasionally difficult, often humorous. Most importantly, it is inseparable from their musical partnership. Perhaps this is why writing the novel began to feel like a natural extension of the subjects I have explored on this site for so long. The Cross-Eyed Pianist has given me the opportunity to talk to hundreds of musicians about their lives and work: their ambitions, doubts, routines, teachers, friendships, successes and disappointments. Facing the Music allowed me to explore some of those same questions through fiction.
And there was one question to which I kept returning:
If music is part of who you are, what remains when circumstances make music impossible?
I don’t think Facing the Music offers a simple answer. Nor did I want music to function as a sentimental cure for suffering. Music cannot undo experience. But perhaps it can preserve something of who we were – and help us discover who we might become afterwards.
The title has more than one meaning. There is the literal act of facing the music in practice and performance, but also the more familiar meaning: accepting the consequences of choices, circumstances and experience. For Theo and Jonathan, ultimately, it means both.
Author’s note: I am profoundly grateful to the many musicians I have encountered over the years, in person, through their concerts, and via my Meet the Artist interview series. Their insights and reflections on practising, performing, teaching and living with music have greatly enriched my understanding of what it means to be a musician. While none of the characters in the novel is based on any one individual, their experiences have informed many aspects of the story.
In 1965, Alexandra von Triessen arrives at the International Ketterling Competition knowing that one performance could make her career – or expose every weakness she has spent a lifetime learning to conceal. In this rarefied world, perfection is merely the starting point. Forty of the world’s most gifted pianists have come to battle for a prize that promises fame, fortune, and artistic immortality. Alexandra is one of the few women among them—and unlike the men surrounding her, she has no taste for combat.
There she meets Sebastian D’Antonio: magnetic, ambitious, dangerously charming, and born for the spotlight. He offers her passion, glamour, and a place beside him at the center of the musical world. But behind Sebastian stands his enigmatic brother Conrad – a restless composer of staggering genius who wants nothing from fame, yet understands Alexandra’s music, her loneliness, and her deepest desires in ways no one else ever has.
What begins as a contest between virtuosos becomes an intimate war between love and loyalty, talent and ambition, truth and myth. Bound together by music, Alexandra, Sebastian, and Conrad are drawn into a decades-spanning triangle of desire, rivalry, sacrifice, and betrayal – where the most beautiful creation may conceal the most devastating secret.
Descending Thirds is a sweeping, sensual novel about the violence beneath beauty, the loneliness of genius, and the terrible price of becoming unforgettable. It asks the question every artist – and every lover – must eventually answer: Do you choose the life that brings you applause, the person who promises you devotion, or the truth that sets your heart on fire?
Interview with author of Descending Thirds, Nicole Conn
Who or what inspired you to pursue your creative career?
My first concert hall was the floor beneath my mother’s piano.
As a child, I would lie underneath it while she practiced Beethoven and Chopin for hours. I felt the vibrations move through the floor and into my body before I had any intellectual understanding of what I was hearing. Music entered me as sensation, emotion and story. Long before I understood harmony or musical form, I understood that music could say what ordinary language could not.
My mother was a brilliant pianist and later became a lauded teacher. She gave me far more than an appreciation of classical music. She taught me, simply by playing, that art can hold grief, desire, fury, tenderness and contradiction all at once. Even as Parkinson’s began taking command of her hands, her relationship with the piano endured. That was extraordinarily painful to witness, but also profound. Her body was becoming less dependable, yet the music remained part of her identity. It made the relationship between memory, the body and artistic expression very real to me.
Christa Hoven, Nicole Conn’s mother
I came to filmmaking and writing through that same desire to express the inexpressible. Film gave me image, language, silence, performance and music—all the elements through which interior life can be revealed. And I’ve always considered the score the soul of a film.
Descending Thirds grew directly out of that inheritance. It is dedicated to my mother, who gave me classical music; to my daughter Gabrielle, whose birth sparked the most compelling muse; and to my son Nicholas, who is non-verbal and extremely Special. I played classical music that was put in his isolette in the NICU. While he cannot communicate, his passion for classical music inspires me every day.
Who or what have been the most significant influences on your career?
My mother remains the beginning of everything. Beethoven and Chopin were part of the atmosphere of our home, almost like another language spoken in the family. Through her, I learned that music was not decoration. It was an emotional necessity.
The composers who shaped Descending Thirds were also significant influences on me personally. I’m mad for Bach as is Conrad in the novel, our genius savant. Beethoven embodies the battle between limitation and will. Schubert carries an ache that can become indistinguishable from beauty. Rachmaninoff gives us emotional sweep without apology. Prokofiev is danger, volatility and modernity. Debussy taught me about colour and atmosphere, and Chopin about intimacy – the ability to make something whispered feel enormous.
But my musical influences are not limited to composers. Cinema taught me to think musically. A film has rhythm, phrasing, counterpoint, repetition, crescendo and silence. A cut can function like a percussive strike; a sustained shot can be a held note. Dialogue has tempo. Characters can move in harmony or dissonance. I have always written and directed with an awareness of those things, even when there is no literal music playing. And I always use one or two composers to be the backbone of every project I do and listen to them incessantly from pre-production right through to editing.
The central musical idea in Descending Thirds comes through Conrad: that music is already everywhere – the wind, footsteps, machinery, conversation and the spaces between sounds. In the novel he hears the legato movement of water, the rhythmic exchange of tennis balls, leaves becoming snare drums in the wind, and even the pizzicato of a coffee maker.
More recently, Mary Jane Wells and Sally Bishop Melbourne have influenced how I understand my own work. Mary Jane revealed rhythms, humour and emotional undercurrents in the prose that even I had not fully heard. Sally gave an audible life to music that had previously existed only in my imagination. Both reminded me that collaboration does not diminish an artist’s vision. With the right people, it expands it.
What have been the greatest challenges of your career so far?
The greatest challenge has been keeping faith with the original impulse of a work while surviving the practical realities required to bring it into the world. In other words – funding!
Independent filmmaking teaches you very quickly that artistic vision and commerce are uneasy but unavoidable companions a thread pursued throughout the novel. You may begin with something deeply personal, but eventually that work must pass through financing, production, distribution, marketing and an industry that often wants certainty from an art form built upon risk. The challenge is knowing where to compromise and where compromise would damage the reason the work exists.
Descending Thirds presented another kind of challenge. I carried and refined the story for approximately twenty-five years. I had to translate music into language without turning the book into a musicology lesson. The technical details had to be credible, but the emotional experience had to come first. I want readers to fall in love with classical music. They shouldn’t need conservatory training to understand what Alexandra experiences when she performs.
Perfectionism has also been a lifelong challenge. And while pursuing it, not feeling entirely like an imposter. Both issues that Alexandra experiences as an artist. Yes, we must push ourselves to the limit, but perfectionism can also become a form of paralysis or cruelty.
That pressure is not confined to classical music. Film and publishing have their own versions of it. The work is never finished enough, financed enough, marketable enough or safe enough. My challenge has been to continue making things despite that.
Of which works are you most proud?
My book Descending Thirds, and especially the extraordinary audiobook created with Mary Jane Wells and Sally Bishop Melbourne.
The novel is probably the longest and most complex “score” I have ever written. Music is not simply its setting. It is the language through which the characters love, compete, betray one another, conceal themselves and, occasionally, tell the truth. The challenge of the audiobook was to make that musical dimension audible without overwhelming the narrative.
Multi Award winning Voice Artist, Mary Jane Wells did far more than narrate the book. She performed it. She gave the characters distinct inner lives but never reduced them to voices or theatrical effects. Alexandra’s reserve, Sebastian’s magnetism, Conrad’s stillness, Chandra’s irreverence and the many other tonal and cultural distinctions had to coexist within one performance. Mary Jane brought emotional precision, intelligence and an extraordinary sense of musical timing to the language. Her ability to deliver every shade of nuance and subtext makes the listener experience so much more depth than I knew was possible.
Mary introduced me to Sally Bishop Melbourne who then undertook something I had once thought impossible: she composed the music the two brothers, Sebastian and Conrad compose. They couldn’t be more different and so she had to imagine what Conrad and Sebastian would create, how their musical identities would differ and how those differences would reveal character. The audiobook contains more than seventy musical moments, bringing together passages from the classical repertoire with Sally’s original compositions.
Several of the classical works were drawn from my mother’s repertoire, so the finished recording became personal on multiple levels. It brought together my mother’s musical legacy, the fictional world I had carried for so many years, Mary Jane’s performance and Sally’s original music. A side note: Sally had suffered the passing of her son, Will, a few years earlier and had been in a state of depression. Composing for the two brothers created in her a new zest for life and creativity.
Descending Thirds has become so healing on so many levels. It was so lovely to see and hear the excitement in her voice and music as she would share the pieces with me.
The moments of which I am proudest are those in which the boundaries disappear—when narration, character, classical music and original composition become one dramatic language. It is one of the rare occasions when the finished work became larger than the version I had heard privately in my imagination.
Whatkind of things in regular life inspire your creative ideas?
I always write what I know—not necessarily as literal autobiography, but from emotional truths I have lived at the very deepest level. My films, scripts and the documentary I made about my son, Little Man, have grown out of some of the most extreme experiences of the human condition: love, disability, motherhood, sacrifice, grief, survival and the complicated ways people try to make themselves bearable to themselves. My next feature, do we not grieve, explores the severe trauma I experienced after the loss of my sister—my best friend—to an extremely violent suicide. I am drawn to the moments when our carefully constructed selves begin to fracture: how do we handle fear, tragedy, the unexpected and who do we become under the klieg lights during those events in our lives.
I believe this emotional honesty is why many people watch my films repeatedly. The circumstances may not mirror their own lives, but the feelings ring true, resonate and can become part of their healing.
My children remain an enormous source of inspiration: Gabrielle’s birth awakened the first impulse that became Descending Thirds, while Nicholas’s experience of classical music reminds me that our most powerful responses to art are often immediate, instinctive and beyond explanation.
What is your definition of success?
Success is completing a work without betraying the reason it came to you—and then allowing it to reach another person.
Awards, reviews, sales and recognition matter. Anyone who says they do not matter is probably being slightly disingenuous. Art requires an audience, and artists need practical ways to continue working. But those things cannot be the final measure.
My deeper concern is whether the work has emotional integrity. Did I tell the truth of the story as fully as I could? Did I resist making it safer merely to make it easier to sell? Did I always ask the question, “what is the best thing for this specific project?” And what survives the distance between what I imagined and what I was capable of creating?
Then there is the audience. Success occurs when someone recognizes part of themselves in the work—even when their life bears no obvious resemblance to the characters’ lives. A reader may know nothing about international piano competitions but understand Alexandra’s fear of not being enough. Someone may never have composed a note but recognize Conrad’s desire to create without becoming a commodity. Another person may see in Sebastian the terrible distance between ability and the art of packaging and commerce.
But for me probably the greatest measure of success are those fans who have written and told me they have seen one of my films ten times, fifty times. They watch one of my films weekly. And those fans who use my films to heal from their own broken stories.
What advice would you give to young or aspiring musicians?
Learn your craft so thoroughly that technique becomes freedom rather than confinement. Practise with discipline, but do not confuse punishment with discipline. They are not the same thing.
Protect the part of yourself that first responded to music before you understood whether you were playing it “correctly.” Technique is indispensable, but technique alone cannot explain why one performance leaves us admiring and another leaves us changed. In Descending Thirds, Alexandra’s first teacher tells her that anyone can execute notes, but not everyone possesses the soul or feeling for music. She also makes it clear that the gift does not excuse the work: practice, practice more, and then practice again.
Be absolutely passionate about your craft. If you’re not, then the piano, writing, making films becomes a massive amount of work without reward. It’s too competitive and arduous not to be driven by a relentless compulsion to do the work.
What do you feel needs to be done to grow classical music’s audiences?
Classical music does not need to become less profound. It needs to become less forbidding.
We need serious, sustained music education in schools, access to instruments and live performance, affordable tickets and programs that reach people where they actually live. A child should not require affluent parents or proximity to a major city to encounter an orchestra or touch a piano.
We also need better storytelling. Tell audiences what was emotionally at stake when a piece was written. Reveal the human being inside the monument. I found while researching for Descending Thirds incredible stories about so many composers. They were not just marble busts. They were ambitious, difficult, desirous, frightened, funny, competitive and frequently chaotic. I loved their flawed humanity.
Descending Thirds and its audiobook are my attempt to create an entry point to classical music. A listener may arrive because of the searing triangular love story and discover Rachmaninoff; another may arrive for the music and become absorbed in the characters.
The tension between accessibility and artistic truth is examined repeatedly in the novel. One character argues that the performer’s job is to excite the public and make people like the music; another asks whether a musician’s obligation is instead to remain true to how they feel it. I do not think those aims have to be enemies. Accessibility is not simplification. It is invitation.
What’s the one thing in the music industry we’re not talking about which you think we should be?
The human cost of excellence. We celebrate the prodigy, the winner, the standing ovation and the apparently flawless performance. We are less willing to ask what was required psychologically to produce them. Humiliation is still sometimes defended as rigorous teaching. Anxiety is treated as weakness. Physical injury, isolation, eating disorders, substance dependence and depression can be regarded as unfortunate but almost predictable by-products of serious artistic life.
Young musicians are often taught to make their entire identities dependent upon ranking, casting, competitions, reviews and access to a field with very few places at the top. They are told to become singular while simultaneously being trained to satisfy institutions, juries, conductors, managers, audiences and algorithms. That is a nearly impossible psychological contradiction.
We also need to discuss how easily image can eclipse artistry. Charisma, mythology and marketability have always influenced musical careers, but contemporary media can intensify that pressure until the artist becomes a brand performing an approved version of the self. Descending Thirds explores all these dynamics — the danger of a world in which perception, promotion and commercial mythology begin to carry as much authority as the music itself. Sebastian even argues that audiences prefer the beautiful myth—that performers such as he make music accessible because they embody what people want to believe.
There must be room for ambition, discipline and exacting standards. But we should be able to distinguish rigor from cruelty and excellence from self-destruction.
What next? Where would you like to be in 10 years time?
The immediate next chapter is to bring Descending Thirds to the screen as a limited series. The novel was always intensely visual to me: the competition halls, the opposing pianos, the orchestra’s and concert halls, Antonia’s mythological gardens, the changing decades and, above all, the physical experience of music passing through the characters. A limited series would allow the story the time it needs. It could preserve the psychological complexity of Alexandra, Sebastian and Conrad while finally allowing audiences to hear the music that governs their lives. I pitch it as an Epic Emmy Prestige Limited Mini-Series.
I’m also in development on my next feature, do we not grieve and publishing my next novel, Armand’s Tango in 2027.
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Spending as much time with my extended intended family of six adult children and my precious granddaughter, Ocean. I identify first and foremost as a Mom or “Granny CoCo”.
Creating. I have been blessed in my life to have so many people make it possible for me to continue making films, shows, and writing books. I am further blessed by a workaholic muse. I am utterly passionate about my work and am extremely grateful for this endless drive.
The other things I am passionate about are the 4 P’s: Puppy (Lady Bugs) Puzzles, Poker and Pot!
What is your most treasured possession?
I’ve never been a “thing” person. My treasured possessions are my family!
What is your present state of mind?
Grateful, restless, slightly overwhelmed and deeply determined.
Completing Descending Thirds after carrying it for twenty-five years might have felt like an ending. Instead, the book, audiobook and developing screen adaptation have made it feel like the beginning of an entirely new creative life. I am trying to remain open to that without becoming so consumed by the destination that I fail to hear what is happening along the way. Process has always been key for me.
Descending Thirds by Nicole Conn is available now in paperback and audiobook format
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