Roger Curtis:

>Can anyone
>else recommend any other novels with a classical music background?

'Gerontius" by James Hamilton-Patterson is about Edward Elgar - a fictional
account of a trip which Elgar took from England and up the Amazon River
by steamer.  The composer went on this trip late in his life, but little
is known about it in fact, so the novelist had free rein to invent, An
excellent novel by a first rank English novelist.

Bernard Chasan