5 New Books for the Classical Music Lover on Your Gift List

This year has been a good one for classical music fans who are readers. 2026 has seen the publication of numerous books about classical music, from Yiyun Li’s novel about real-life composer John Field, to Anthony Roth Costanzo’s engaging exploration of the history of the countertenor. Here are our five favorite releases from the past year, each sure to delight the classical music lover on your gift list.

Partita – Barbara Kingsolver

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Barbara Kingsolver returns with her tenth novel, Partita, “a story of a brief, passionate, life-changing love affair, wrapped up in what might be the greatest romance of all: our eternal human longing for art and beauty” (Harper Collins). The novel’s protagonist, Livia, has made her peace with her modest life until a man from her past comes back into her life. At the time of their meeting, Livia was a young pianist at conservatory with a promising future ahead of her—that is, until a hand injury and a whirlwind romance curtail her career. The man’s reappearance decades later shakes up ghosts of the past and makes her consider the roads not taken.

The novel shifts between past and present through memories presented as musical dances, as in a partita. In musicological terms, a partita is a Baroque suite, often for keyboard, comprising various dances of different tempos and moods. The book echoes this musical structure, with moments of happiness balanced with episodes of deep sadness.

The passion for music that runs throughout the novel stems from Kingsolver’s own love of classical music. Like her protagonist, Kingsolver grew up in Appalachia and saw the piano as a means of escape. She also attended college on a piano scholarship but dropped it as a major once she realized she was not of the caliber to sustain a solo career.

Also like Livia, Kingsolver has had to cope with physical constraints on her playing, as she suffers from a genetic condition that causes the fingers on her left hand to curl into a fist. Thanks to her hand surgeon, she is still able to play for her own enjoyment, an activity that she calls an exercise in mindfulness. “Music takes you outside of your petty woes and cares,” she told the New York Times. “It takes you outside of your life into pure time, pure beauty, in the same way that writing does for us.”

Music Against the Night – Yiyun Li

Yiyun Li’s Music Against the Night imagines the saga of two real-life musicians, Irish pianist and composer John Field and his wife, Adelaide Percheron. Born in Dublin in 1782, Field is credited with inventing the nocturne, a dreamy, intimate piano piece that evokes nighttime—a genre Chopin later made famous. In 1810, Field married Percheron, a strong-willed orphan born in French India whose pianistic talents allowed her to escape to Paris. 

As Field is often relegated to the footnotes of music history textbooks, and Percheron only a passing reference in his biographies, Li’s novel attempts to fill in the blanks. Weaving together their stories in polyphonic fashion, Li charts the lives of Field and Percheron as they mature, fall in love, and chase their respective ambitions against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars.  

Although Li did not play piano before embarking on this novel, she began lessons as part of the research process. While she says she is not yet skilled enough to play the works of Chopin or Field, she says she is at the level of Muzio Clementi, Field’s real-life tutor whose music has been used to teach piano for centuries.

The Last Movement – Robert Seethaler 

Austrian author Robert Seethaler also imagines a composer’s inner life in The Last Movement. “An intimate portrait of genius, love, and betrayal at the end of Gustav Mahler’s life” (Europa Editions), it tracks Mahler’s journey aboard the Amerika as he sails back to Europe from New York in the spring of 1911. A severe streptococcal blood infection has caused him to cancel his remaining engagements with the New York Philharmonic and return home. Sadly, the infection would prove too strong for his already compromised heart. He passed away in Vienna on May 11, just two months short of his 51st birthday.

In Seethaler’s novella, Mahler reflects on music, love, and loss as he realizes his time is drawing nigh. Despite achieving the pinnacle of fame as a conductor and becoming one of the most revered symphonists, his life has been tinged with grief. In addition to his chronic heart condition and the tragic loss of his young daughter, his wife has fallen for another man, an architect named Walter Gropius. “Deftly translated from the German by Charlotte Collins, Seethaler’s account of this man of genius testifies to the sacrifices that accompany the fulfillment of his gifts” (New York Times).

Countertenor – Anthony Roth Costanzo 

Moving into nonfiction, we have Anthony Roth Costanzo’s Countertenor, an exploration of the history of the countertenor voice, from its castrato origins to its resurgence in the 20th century. Costanzo, one of the world’s leading countertenors, takes readers on a journey through music history to show how countertenors influenced the trajectory of opera and challenged ideas about gender and sexuality through the striking beauty and otherness of their voices.

Costanzo is known for his innovation both on and off the stage. In addition to a full-time singing career, he serves as General Director and President of Opera Philadelphia and Artistic Director of SongStudio at Carnegie Hall. In the book, he explains how the countertenor voice’s place on the fringes, with few roles and a limited repertoire, forced him to think entrepreneurially if he wanted to have a fulfilling career.

The book, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, comes with a companion CD from Nonesuch Records of music mentioned in the book. Alongside expected baroque selections by Monteverdi, Dowland, and Vivaldi, it contains the world premiere recording of a new song by Osvaldo Golijov, a traditional Hawaiian song, John Madara and David White’s “You Don’t Own Me,” the classic Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons tune “Walk Like a Man,” and much more.

Passing the Baton – Phillip Huscher 

Phillip Huscher, program annotator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (CSO) since 1987, has written a book on the history of the CSO through the music directors who shaped it. Passing the Baton comes at a critical juncture for the organization, as Klaus Mäkelä begins his long-awaited tenure as Music Director in the fall of 2027, becoming only the 11th conductor in the orchestra’s 135-year history to hold the title.

“With a scholar’s care for detail and a novelist’s attention to drama, Huscher invites us into the tangled machinations behind the success or failure of each chapter in the orchestra’s storied past” (University of Chicago Press). Huscher tells the story of the CSO through the Music Directors who have tried to put their artistic stamp on it while sustaining its legacy. He recounts how legendary conductors such as Fritz Reiner and Sir Georg Solti brought the orchestra to international acclaim, whereas others had more fraught tenures marked by bad reviews, financial mismanagement, and power struggles. 

“How a single leader can influence and shape the orchestra is the stuff of drama,” Huscher said in an interview on the CSO’s website. “That required a lot of digging beyond the obvious sources, and it raised all sorts of questions about the balances and limits of power within a major cultural institution. And because of this angle, this quickly became a piece of investigative reporting.” As a result, Huscher turned to oral histories, personal communications, diaries, minutes of board meetings, annotated scores, and interviews to piece together the story, which is ultimately about the power of music to change the world.