Books by Simon Morrison

3. Simon Morrison, The Love & Wars of Lina Prokofiev .  More suspense and interest for me than any biography of Prokofiev I have read.  I had not known that she grew up in Brooklyn.  I am happy to recommend Morrison’s books more generally.

4. Simon Morrison, Tchaikovsky’s Empire: A New Life of Russia’s Greatest Composer .  My favorite book about Tchaikovsky, engaging but it also covers the music for the music’s sake as well.  I liked this sentence from the book jacket: “His life and art were framed by Russian national ambition, and his work was the emanation of an imperial subject: kaleidoscopic, capacious, cosmopolitan.”  The book does go relatively light on Tchaikovsky’s um…personal life.