“…while upstairs my mother turned up the recordings of Elgar, Finzi, and Vaughan Williams that were her drug of choice. I would try to settle in the kitchen with my homework or my drawing spread out on the table. The air was saturated with competing choruses—“Pass the puck, you moron!” versus the delicately ascending lark…”

Chapter 4: More about the new boy

Watch here as Hilary Hahn plays Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “The Lark Ascending.”