“This is a book of intimate grandeur and accessible depth. It captures the spiritual essence of two of life’s most important anchors: music and home. For music lovers, Distant Melodies is filled with unexpected gems about things we thought to be familiar already, and like a great quartet it illuminates a musical life with precision and humor. But non-musicians will also recognize themselves in the revelations of this book, for this is a book about finding purpose in life.”

Patrick Summers, artistic and music director, Houston Grand Opera

“This highly readable book combines original historical research, revealing biography, and beautiful writing. Dusinberre offers fascinating musical insights into how string quartets grow and change. I learned so much from it!”

Michael Beckerman, New York University

“Dusinberre doesn’t write just about music but about the exhilarations and frustrations, the collaborative synergies and impasses, the fascinations and longueurs of making music. With wit and verve, Distant Melodies presents a poetic blend of personal memoir, music-historical vignettes, and absorbing practical criticism. It is rare to encounter a performer of Dusinberre’s deep experience who also writes with such erudition, lucidity, and candidness.”

Nicholas Mathew, author of 'The Haydn Economy'

“Music’s power to connect us across different times and places is at the heart of Distant Melodies, a book that is full of historical, musical, and personal insights, told with humor and warmth. Vignettes of Elgar as woodsman and Dvořák as trainspotter humanize these revered figures, while accounts of the Takács Quartet playing Bartók in Budapest or Dusinberre rehearsing Britten in lockdown provide a glimpse into the performing mindset. The book may end up uncertain about what the future holds, but what comes through most strongly is the bond between players keen to continue making music meaningful and meaningfully, to make the life we have worth living.”

Laura Tunbridge, author of 'Singing in the Age of Anxiety'

“What a gem of a book! As with his earlier Beethoven for a Later Age, Dusinberre manages to mingle historical perspective with personal and practical experience relating to a quartet repertoire that has meant a lot to him over the years. The result is a brilliantly engaging and attractive narrative. Not to be missed!”

Marc-André Hamelin, pianist and composer

“If the familiarity of location and the affinity of kinship influence the making and performance of the music, where does that leave the exiled or emigrating musician? Dusinberre meditates on his own situation and enhances it by considering the lives of four artists – Edward Elgar, Benjamin Britten, Antonín Dvorák and Béla Bartók. . . . Although Dusinberre follows their travels and the effects of their detachments from homeland, it is his own story that has the most weight and nuance. This is a memoir for those who delight in — or want to know more about — both the composition of the music and what it takes to perform it in far-flung places.”

On the Seawall

"Dusinberre does a nice job of showing us how the discordant experiences of figurative exile come to be transposed into music that though without words, speaks no less."

NewCity

"Yet he [Dusinberre] is a humble man and through his self-criticism, and growing self-awareness over the years, we witness his changing perspective on musical interpretation and human relationships. His writing voice is human, and humorous, and perhaps most importantly, knowledgeable."

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