The Piano Shop on the Left Bank
Discovering a Forgotten Passion in a Paris Atelier
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Narrated by:
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Dan Cashman
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By:
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Thad Carhart
About this listen
Thad Carhart never realized there was a gap in his life until he happened upon Desforges Pianos, a demure little shopfront in his Paris neighborhood that seemed to want to hide rather than advertise its wares. Like Alice in Wonderland, he found his attempts to gain entry rebuffed at every turn. An accidental introduction finally opened the door to the quartier's oddest hangout, where locals - from university professors to pipefitters - gather on Friday evenings to discuss music, love, and life over glasses of wine.
Luc, the atelier's master, proves an excellent guide to the history of this most gloriously impractical of instruments. A bewildering variety passes through his restorer's hands: delicate ancient pianofortes, one perhaps the onetime possession of Beethoven. Great hulking beasts of thunderous voice. And the modest piano "with the heart of a lion" that was to become Thad's own.
What emerges is a warm and intuitive portrait of the secret Paris - one closed to all but a knowing few. The Piano Shop on the Left Bank is the perfect audiobook for music lovers or for anyone who longs to recapture a lost passion.
©2016 Thad Carhart (P)2016 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Great book, wonderful reader
- By Lisbeth on 11-22-11
By: Dinaw Mengestu
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The Sunday Philosophy Club
- An Isabel Dalhousie Mystery
- By: Alexander McCall Smith
- Narrated by: Davina Porter
- Length: 8 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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New York Times best-selling author Alexander McCall Smith, winner of the first-ever Saga Award for Wit, has entertained millions with his beloved No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency mysteries. Now this phenomenally popular author introduces a fresh series, brimming with the charm and humor his stable of dedicated fans can't get enough of.
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Advice For Prospective Listeners
- By DCinMI on 02-18-13
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The Lost Painting
- The Quest for a Caravaggio Masterpiece
- By: Jonathan Harr
- Narrated by: Campbell Scott
- Length: 6 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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An Italian village on a hilltop near the Adriatic coast, a decaying palazzo facing the sea, and in the basement, cobwebbed and dusty, lit by a single bulb, an archive unknown to scholars. Here, a young graduate student from Rome, Francesca Cappelletti, makes a discovery that inspires a search for a work of art of incalculable value, a painting lost for almost two centuries.
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an incredible and complex story unfolds seamlessly
- By Jeremiah on 10-31-05
By: Jonathan Harr
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The Coincidence Makers
- A Novel
- By: Yoav Blum
- Narrated by: Fred Berman
- Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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What if the drink you just spilled, the train you just missed, or the lottery ticket you just found was not just a random occurrence? What if it's all part of a bigger plan? What if there's no such thing as a chance encounter? What if there are people we don't know determining our destiny? And what if they are even planning the fate of the world? Enter the Coincidence Makers - Guy, Emily, and Eric - three seemingly ordinary people who work for a secret organization devoted to creating and carrying out coincidences. What the rest of the world sees as random occurrences, are, in fact, carefully orchestrated events.
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Amazing!
- By Gal Wolff on 07-31-18
By: Yoav Blum
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Where the Heart Beats
- John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists
- By: Kay Larson
- Narrated by: Jason Wineinger
- Length: 15 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Composer John Cage sought the silence of a mind at peace with itself - and found it in Zen Buddhism, a spiritual path that changed both his music and his view of the universe. "Remarkably researched, exquisitely written", Where the Heart Beats weaves together "a great many threads of cultural history" (Maria Popova, Brain Pickings) to illuminate Cage’s struggle to accept himself and his relationship with choreographer Merce Cunningham. Freed to be his own man, Cage originated exciting experiments that set him at the epicenter of a new avant-garde forming in the 1950s.
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Mind Expansion
- By Robert Keith on 04-04-15
By: Kay Larson
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The Geography of Genius
- A Search for the World's Most Creative Places from Ancient Athens to Silicon Valley
- By: Eric Weiner
- Narrated by: Eric Weiner
- Length: 14 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Geography of Genius, acclaimed travel writer Weiner sets out to examine the connection between our surroundings and our most innovative ideas. He explores the history of places, like Vienna of 1900, Renaissance Florence, ancient Athens, Song Dynasty Hangzhou, and Silicon Valley, to show how certain urban settings are conducive to ingenuity.
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Very, very disappointing
- By Tamara Greer on 06-08-16
By: Eric Weiner
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In the Light of What We Know
- By: Zia Haider Rahman
- Narrated by: Ralph Lister
- Length: 21 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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One September morning in 2008, an investment banker approaching forty, his career in collapse and his marriage unraveling, receives a surprise visitor at his West London townhouse. In the disheveled figure of a South Asian male carrying a backpack the banker recognizes a long-lost friend, a mathematics prodigy who disappeared years earlier under mysterious circumstances. The friend has resurfaced to make a confession of unsettling power.
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dreadful
- By sam on 06-05-15
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Russian Winter
- A Novel
- By: Daphne Kalotay
- Narrated by: Kathleen Gati
- Length: 14 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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In Russian Winter, the beautiful debut novel by critically acclaimed writer Daphne Kalotay, a famed ballerina’s jewelry auction in Boston reveals long-held secrets of love and family, friendship and rivalry, harkening back to Stalinist Russia. Called “tender, passionate, and moving” by Jenna Blum, the New York Times bestselling author of Those Who Save Us, Russian Winter is a perfect choice for fans of the novels of Debra Dean (The Madonnas of Leningrad), Ann Patchett (Bel Canto), and Ian McEwan (Atonement).
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Read this review; Sophisticated and wonderful!
- By Cookie on 01-15-12
By: Daphne Kalotay
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Dreams Underfoot
- The Newford Collection
- By: Charles de Lint
- Narrated by: Kate Reading
- Length: 15 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Welcome to Newford: to the music clubs, the waterfront, and the alleyways where ancient myths and magic spill into the modern world. Gemmins live in abandoned cars and skells traverse the tunnels below, while mermaids swim in the gray harbor waters and fill the cold night with their song. Come meet Jilly, painting wonders in the rough city streets; and Geordie, playing fiddle while he dreams of a ghost; and the Angel of Grasso Street gathering the fey and the wild and the poor and the lost.
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Too Much Urban Fantasy Wears Thin
- By Jefferson on 06-15-13
By: Charles de Lint
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In the Matter of Nikola Tesla
- By: Anthony Flacco
- Narrated by: Bernard Clark
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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This fictionalized story of the true-life genius Nikola Tesla - arguably the most influential inventor in history - offers a "young-to-old" portrayal in the form of "A Romance of the Mind". It reveals his impassioned inner life and his secret love for Karina, the muse no one else can see who brings him life-altering inspirations.
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Excellent fictionalization
- By C. Elliott on 06-17-13
By: Anthony Flacco
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The City of Falling Angels
- By: John Berendt
- Narrated by: Holter Graham
- Length: 12 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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The author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil returns to give us an intimate look at the "magic, mystery, and decadence" of the city of Venice and its inhabitants.
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Do Yourself a Favor and Skip This Book!
- By AUDIBLE on 10-08-05
By: John Berendt
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To Sir, with Love
- By: E. R. Braithwaite
- Narrated by: Ben Onwukwe
- Length: 6 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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With opportunities for black men limited in post-World War II London, Rick Braithwaite, a former Royal Air Force pilot and Cambridge-educated engineer, accepts a teaching position that puts him in charge of a class of angry, unmotivated, bigoted white teenagers whom the system has mostly abandoned. When his efforts to reach these troubled students are met with threats, suspicion, and derision, Braithwaite takes a radical new approach. He will treat his students as people poised to enter the adult world.
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Great book!
- By Lionsroar on 12-08-18
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Paris to the Moon
- By: Adam Gopnik
- Narrated by: Adam Gopnik
- Length: 4 hrs and 44 mins
- Abridged
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Paris. The name alone conjures images of chestnut-lined boulevards, sidewalk cafés, breathtaking façades around every corner: in short, an exquisite romanticism that has captured the American imagination for as long as there have been Americans.
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Wish this wasn't abridged!!
- By Sarah D. on 03-25-17
By: Adam Gopnik
What listeners say about The Piano Shop on the Left Bank
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Allegra Stevens
- 09-05-19
Great Story
I read this book shortly after it came out and enjoyed it then. But listening to it was so much fun. I had forgotten many of the side stories that went on. What was really enjoyable for me is to hear the wonderful descriptions of all the pianos that came into the shop.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Windell little
- 12-04-23
Just a beautiful book!
The subject, writing, flow all wonderful. And also wonderfully read. Thank You for this diversion
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- Steve Kaiser
- 10-12-17
a few moments of pure soul
It's hidding a passion longing to come out in between it's lines. I wish it showed more of itself.
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- sophia
- 07-13-23
Thoroughly enjoyable
Never had I thought I’d care so much about a piano shop, the craft of making pianos, and the details and secrets that builds up a piano. This is truly a carnival and opens up a new world for me.
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- GE Guest
- 05-14-23
Beautiful and Technically Perfect
I listened to this while working on pianos - putting new ecsaine on catchers for a 1905 Everett, updating damper blocks and wires for an 1893 Chickering quarter grand, preparing for an 1888 Knabe 6' total restomod. For just an enthusiast, Carhart gets it all perfect. Not just the technical, but the subjective magic that emerges in the rich history of piano making and playing.
If Luc is a real person I relate to him very well. He conveys the strange nature of piano value as I would - more complex than anything else. Anything. A piano is unarguably the king of all musical instruments. The most commanding piece of furniture in any house. And if old, the grandest of antiques. All in one thing! He gets it.
It's hard to believe Thad's only repair experience is replacing a brace. His descriptions are so perfect I could envision everything. I'm reminded of Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - a Honda Superhawk was in my imagination even BEFORE I knew that's what it really was. There are subtleties in the way parts fit together that usually only an expert understands. Carhart nails it. How appropriate that he actually mentions Zen and the Art of Archery.
Be assured that if anyone finds this book boring it says nothing about the book and everything about themselves. The fine balance in elements is maintained throughout - Paris and the people, personal relationships, unspoken attitudes and customs. And of course, pianos in all their underappreciated glory, narrated transparently.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Andrea Lee
- 01-06-19
great story marred by awful mispronounced French
couldn't somebody have at least coached the reader? Brazzerie? Sorbon? distracting and unfair to author.
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- Pam
- 03-21-22
Endearing story
This was a delightful and engaging book with a lovely and not boring history of the piano. The author’s journey as he returned to the piano with a renewed passion as an adult was a very good read.
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- JK
- 04-30-24
ENJOY
As a music lover, although I don’t play any instrument, this was a totally enjoyable listen.
The short histories of the different pianos is very interesting.
There are some really humorous parts.
The description of the different areas in Paris is also interesting.
The author and the narrator as a team are outstanding.
I highly recommend this book if you are looking for a relaxing story.
My thanks to all involved, JK.
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- Tyler
- 11-10-24
Great story and good history of pianos
Reminded me of Bill Bryson memoir blended with history of the piano. Would recommend to piano players and lovers.
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- Pit Bull Mom
- 01-05-20
Good for a short attention span
This book is included in James Mustich's book, 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die (A Life-Changing List), and I'm working slowly through that. It was an easy listen. There really isn't much of a plot; it's a sort of ode to the piano that can be picked up and put down at will. It's so much that way that I sent it to my mother, who has dementia and finds reading difficult. I'm a fan of the piano and am glad I listened. I learned a lot. I will agree with another reviewer, however, that the narrator's pronounciation of French is terrible. I also found it odd that the French phrases were only sometimes translated to English. For someone who doesn't have at least a minimal hold on French, it may be irritating. I would recommend this for anyone who loves the piano, music in general, or Paris. Or if you just want to hear the words of someone really passionate about something.
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2 people found this helpful