Of novels with a classical music interest I would recommend Richard
Powers' "The Time of our Singing", which combines themes of music,
physics and race.  I found it engrossing and moving.  It is the one novel
I can think of where music is not just an element of the plot or of the
background, but is at the heart of the ideas.  (That might be said too
for Hermann Hesse's "the Glass Bead Game", though the role of music here
is a little mysterious).  And it was the best novel I have read in the
past year I would say.  A person for whom music was less than vitally
important might find it difficult to come to terms with.

George Marshall
Cheshire, England