Just before his death, Sanford Friedman completed this, his final novel, something entirely different from anything he, or for that matter anyone, had written before - Conversations with Beethoven, a moving meditation on greatness and pettiness, vulnerability and genius, that is as elegiac as it is witty and engaging.

"When the assistant manager of a hardware store in rural New Jersey shows up at the offices of Cubbage & Wakeham, an elite New York auction house, with a worn musical manuscript he hopes to sell for a small (or perhaps hefty) fortune, he is greeted with subdued snickers--and not surprisingly. The title page of the document reads, 'William Tell: A Dramatic Symphony' and is signed 'Ludwig van Beethoven.' The bearer of the composition claims he recently...

"Vienna, 1800. Countess Julie Guicciardi's life is about to change forever. The spirited eighteen-year-old is taking piano lessons with Ludwig van Beethoven, the most talented piano virtuoso in the musical capital of Europe. She is captivated by his volatile genius, while he is drawn to her curiosity and disarming candor. Between them, a unique romance. But Beethoven has a secret he's yet to share, and Julie is harboring a secret of her own, one so...