When the Music Stopped

Download or read book When the Music Stopped written by Thomas J. Cottle and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the story of one woman's decision to forfeit a brilliant career for the sake of motherhood. Once a child prodigy, Gitta Gradova traveled the world as an internationally acclaimed concert pianist, performing recitals as well as appearing with prominent orchestras of her era. Her son Thomas J. Cottle uses written records, interviews, and personal reminiscence to reconstruct her life, as well as their own mother-son relationship. He is at times a storyteller, at times a psychologist, at times a son seeking to uncover those aspects of his mother's life he could never know, or perhaps, chose not to know until it was too late.