COUNTERPOINT A Memoir of Bach and Mourning

Narrator Paul Heitsch walks a tightrope in this memoir. He must not tumble into rage or wallow in regret. Kennicott's mother was born to be a concert violinist. The wreck of her career wrecked the mother who survived. "Life gave her little joy, and when she died, it was in anguish, without any sense of peace." As the cancer triumphed, her son listened and listened to a Bach partita for a single violin. He had learned to read music before he learned to read words. Not even Bach could console him. Afterward, he took up the GOLDBERG VARIATIONS. When Heitsch delivers the word "violent," it is with feeling, but not enough to even jostle the letters. It is for us, the listeners, to sob and gawp. B.H.C. © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine [Published: MAY 2020]