More than thirty years ago a green and unsophisticated Methodist boy from Oz had to be taught how to dress his salad correctly in a tiny Paris bistro, and felt the first stirring that he could 'perhaps nurture an interest in food'. Stephen Downes, now a renowned restaurant critic, returns to the city of lights and Michelin stars to test France's legendary reputation for fine dining. Is Paris still home to the 'great cathedrals' of restauration or sacr bleu is it a city of over-fussy, over-...

The Hands of Pianists’ narrator is a neurotic freelance writer who aims to prove that pianos kill elite pianists. For decades, he has grappled with the guilt that followed an accident in which he sawed off his talented sister’s fingers, ending her promising career at the keyboard. His investigations centre on the violent deaths at 31 of three great pianists, his detective work taking him from Melbourne to Geelong and Sydney, to the south of France, London, Sussex and the Czech Rep...

'Blackie' is the heart-warming story of an unlikely friendship between Australian writer Stephen Downes and Blackie, a back-fence stray. Stephen never much liked cats. But one day, his sons Patrick and Benny find three kittens at the bottom of the garden. Two of the strays -- Blackie and Fluffy -- soon become part of the family. Stephen falls in love with Blackie, a confident, friendly cat who keeps him company while he's working and takes naps on his study floor.But one day, Blacki...

While rummaging in a cupboard one day, the narrator of 'Adagio for a simple clarinet' rediscovers his father's clarinet, forgotten for years on a high shelf. Finding the instrument arouses in him long-buried memories and the childhood passion for music that his father had thwarted. Unable to make peace with his father before he died, he now finds himself compelled to learn more about the clarinet -- its sounds, its workings, its history -- and to teach himself to play it. He chooses the 'A...

Mural is a haunting 'confession' by a psychopath known only as D. Held in a secure facility, he has been asked by his psychiatrist to write down his thoughts, admissions, anxieties and uncertainties. They are at first revealed through the stories of other people's lives and obsessions.Specifically, D is pre-occupied with a British man who spent his early years as a schoolteacher in Australia before becoming a renowned sexologist. D is also consumed by Australia's most prol...

The music of Gustav Mahler repeatedly engages with Romantic notions of redemption. This is expressed in a range of gestures and procedures, shifting between affirmative fulfilment and pessimistic negation. In this groundbreaking study, Stephen Downes explores the relationship of this aspect of Mahler's music to the output of Benjamin Britten, Kurt Weill and Hans Werner Henze. Their initial admiration was notably dissonant with the prevailing Zeitgeist – Britten in 1930s England, Weill in 1...

The strange tale of America's best pianist and the Australian lipstick salesman who immortalised his genius.A compelling and surprising tale of musical passion, tragedy and revival. In his prime, William Kapell was acknowledged to be 'the greatest pianistic talent since Horowitz'. Yet his return flight from Australia - where he toured in 1953 - ploughed into a mountain south of San Francisco and all on board were killed. Kapell's promising career was brutally cut short at the premat...

In this glorious celebration of food and eating, Stephen Downes, one of Australia's foremost food critics and food writers, leads readers through the 100 food experiences they must have before they expire, based on his own culinary encounters, and his astonishing food knowledge and expertise. Some of these experiences are as simple and affordable as making and eating homemade mayonnaise, while others are as glamorous as consuming fried fresh foie gras at the Relais de la Poste in Magesq ne...

In a wide-ranging study of sentimentalism’s significance for styles, practices and meanings of music in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a series of interpretations scrutinizes musical expressions of sympathetic responses to suffering and the longing to belong. The book challenges hierarchies of artistic value and the associated denigration of sentimental feeling in gendered discourses. Fresh insights are thereby developed into sentimentalism’s place in musical constructions of emot...

The Muse has long been figured as a divine or erotically alluring consort to the virile male artist, who may inspire him or lead him to the edge of madness. This book explores the changing cultural expressions of the relationship between the male artist with a beloved, imagined or desired Muse, to offer new and penetrating perspectives on musical representations and transformations of creative masculine subjectivity, and important aspects of the shift from the styles and aesthetics of Roma...

Gustav Mahler’s status as an icon of fin-de-siècle Viennese music is assured, with his works now staples of the concert repertoire. His life story has been told in numerous biographies, films and novels, yet he remains an ambiguous, provocative figure. Mahler was a composer who challenged musical form and style but identified with German Enlightenment and Romantic culture, disliking many contemporary artistic trends. He was a Jewish conductor who reached the pinnacle of his profes...

The Polish composer Karol Szymanowski is one of the most fascinating musical figures of the early twentieth century. His works included four symphonies, two violin concertos, the operas Hagith and King Roger, the ballet-pantomime Harnasie, the oratorio Stabat Mater, as well as numerous piano, violin, vocal and choral compositions. The profile and popularity of Szymanowski's music outside Poland has never been higher and continues to grow. The Szymanowski Companion constitutes the most sign...