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When American violinist Anthea Kreston is selected as the fourth member of Germany’s Artemis Quartet, it is the culmination of decades of dedication. In Crescendo, her enchanting and deeply personal memoir, Kreston writes about growing up in a well-to-do but difficult family in Chicago, leaving home at sixteen, studying at the ultracompetitive Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia (Hilary Hahn was a classmate), then burinng out and leaving it all behind for a commune in Oregon.

All the while, Kreston never stops playing her beloved violin, and, in time. she finds her way back, making it to the top of the classical music world. She writes candidly about struggling with years of infertility and the challenges of being a mother with a performance career. When she moves her young family to Germany, she struggles to stay true to herself, and maintain her marriage, amid the never-ending pressure of the string quartet.

Told with warmth and wit (Kreston once gets out of a traffic ticket by playing Danny Boy for the Irish cop), Crescendo is an honest, and ultimately celebratory, reflection on art, ambition, and the choices that compose a life.