Honeybees and Distant Thunder

March 1, 2023
I set a bomb to go off."" A legendary maestro was rumored to have said those words just before his death. In his letter of recommendation to the judges of the prestigious Yoshigae International Piano Competition, the maestro instead referred to his student as a gift to the world of music. Sixteen-year-old Jin Kazama, the son of a beekeeper, who has never before performed competitively, indeed creates an explosive reaction when his powerful sound is unleashed on the judges. His seemingly improvisational approach, which flies in the face of classical tradition, in turn astounds and inspires his fellow competitors. They include a 28-year-old father raised far from the affluent world of most participants, who is convinced this will mark his retirement as a professional musician; a popular Latin American teen pianist studying at Juilliard; and a 20-year-old entering her first senior-level competition after abandoning the spotlight following her mother's death seven years earlier. All are tested and transformed during 11 grueling days of performances, the tension exquisitely maintained through the final note.

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Starred review from April 1, 2023
Driven young people face off at a prestigious Japanese piano competition in this propulsive and poetic novel. While moving smoothly among multiple points of view, Onda concentrates on four of the more unusual contestants. Aya Eiden, now 20, was an up-and-coming pianist when her mother died seven years earlier and hasn't played professionally since. Ambitious Japanese Peruvian Masaru Carlos Levi Anatole, a Juilliard student, knew Aya when they were both kids in Tokyo. Akashi Takashima, 28, is the oldest of the competitors and has been working in a music store, while precocious and startling 16-year-old Jin Kazama, the "Honeybee Prince," has been traveling the world helping his beekeeper father and has never had a piano of his own, though he has been nurtured by recently deceased maestro Yuji Von Hoffmann since the age of 5. As the competition proceeds through four taut rounds, eliminating contestants liberally along the way, Onda places the reader not only in the position of those playing a particular piece, but often in the minds of several observers, each with their own take on the style and effect of the playing. She pays particular attention to how her four key players affect each other, both personally and musically, but also broadens out to include the perspectives of, among others, the stage manager, a couple of the judges, many of the other competitors, the florist with whom Jin stays while at the competition, the piano tuner, and the composer whose new work all the contestants are required to play. Setting the novel during the two weeks of the competition both gives the novel a solid structure and adds suspense, and the author's clear passion for and knowledge of the classical repertoire shine through. Even readers with no prior affection for the works played in the competition should be tantalized into taking a listen by Onda's descriptions of the music and its effects on listeners; one piece sounds like "a fluffy, plumped-up quilt, cushiony, as well as slightly damp" and another like a "thick, rough-hewn log. Unvarnished, unworked, the beauty of the grain visible." A thrilling depiction of the power of music.

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