CECILE BALAVOINE
Maestro - Mercure de France
"It is so much joy, those first three chords that make my whole room resound, the phrasing that takes flight, the triplets that slide and carry me with them beyond the garden, the score bordered with a green, baroque border. On it, one reads the name of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. This name, I repeat it in my head, it makes only one and very long word, hard to say, same as Azay-le-Rideau. Volfgangamadéoussemozare, Volfgangamadéoussemozare.
At the age of nine, Cécile discovered the music of Mozart, and it was a revelation. Some children invent imaginary friends, others worship fictional characters. For little Cecile, the greatest hero is called Mozart! She loves him without sharing and like a god.
Now a journalist, Cecile's passion remains intact. She now has an intimate knowledge of Mozart's work. The day she has to interview a famous conductor, she doesn't know that her life will change. On the other end of the phone, the maestro's voice disturbs her, just as Mozart's music had disturbed and enchanted her years before... But does one fall in love with a voice, even with a great maestro?
Maestro is Cécile Balavoine's first novel.

STÉPHANIE KALFON
Erik Satie's umbrellas - Joëlle Losfeld Editions
In 1901, Erik Satie was thirty-four years old. With no resources and no professional future, he abandoned Montmartre and the Chat Noir inn for a squalid suburban room where, stuck between two out-of-tune pianos and fourteen identical umbrellas, he drank as much as, or more than, he composed. A critical observer of his contemporaries, the man portrayed by Stéphanie Kalfon is also a brilliant and whimsical creator: he condemns the lack of originality of the musical society of the time, and his refusal of the rules earns him the incomprehension and rejection of his teachers at the Conservatory.

AKIRA MIZUBAYASHI
Un amour de Mille-Ans - Gallimard
Sen-nen - a Japanese first name whose meaning will only be revealed later - is married to Mathilde, a French woman. A former professor of French literature at a university in Tokyo, Sen-nen now lives in Paris with his wife, who is suffering from a serious illness that forces her to stay in her room. Both music lovers, they met during a music course in France. Long before that, in Paris, Sen-nen had made the momentous encounter of a singer, Clémence, who sang Suzanne in The Marriage of Figaro. Dazzled, he attended all the performances and became friends with her. Years later, when he had lost sight of her, he received a message from Clémence: The Marriage was to be staged again at the Opera, in the original production that she was responsible for supervising. Mathilde lets her husband go to meet the past, for a long conversation in which music and love will play a central role.