Maestro! Maestro!
Fred Calvert
Independently Published (2023)
ISBN: 979-8856580913
Reviewed by Joan Kirschner for Reader Views (03/2025)
Fred Calvert’s “Maestro! Maestro!” combines elements of fantasy, romance, music history, satire, and revenge, presented in a drolly humorous format punctuated with a generous number of comically rendered full-page illustrations.
In Vienna, in 1900 Anton Becker, a poor but talented young composer, is trying to make his mark in the musical world. Vienna is, of course, one of the great European centers for classical music, where Mozart, Beethoven, and many others created their most memorable works. Anton also happens to be madly in love with the beautiful Lisa von Schelling, the oldest daughter of an upper-class family. Her social-climbing father seeks to cement his prestige and up his wealth with a brilliant marriage for his daughter, but Lisa returns Anton’s feelings, much to her father’s frustration and chagrin.
Down in the Netherworld, the Devil, a.k.a. the Prince of Darkness, is frustrated with the disappointing musical options available for his entertainment. He sends one of the inhabitants of his realm, a former music critic who was universally hated by all, back up to Vienna to find a musician he can corrupt and then own.
The critic, Wilhelm von Stockenhaus, known as Villi, is threatened with especially miserable punishments if he doesn’t fulfill his mission, so he is determined to find a musician he can convince to make a deal with the Devil. He happens upon Anton, who is struggling to pay the rent on his attic room, to afford to buy food, and to continue his romance with the lovely Lisa, all while trying to compose a masterpiece.
The back-and-forth between the dark angel Villi, and the talented but vulnerable Anton, includes encounters with the great Beethoven himself, sent down from Heaven as a rescuing angel imbued with the superior powers of goodness, plus analysis and commentary from Sigmund Freud.
“Maestro! Maestro!” is a highly imaginative, often hilarious, novel that is completely different from just about any other current work of fiction. Readers who enjoy originality and humor, have an interest in classical music, and the culture of turn-of-the-twentieth century Vienna, are sure to be entertained.
The characters are vividly drawn and while caricatures, are very believable depictions of human nature, though at times they do become quite a bit larger than life. The mostly honorable though tempted Anton is talented and charming, and Lisa is outstandingly blonde and beautiful. It’s easy to laugh at the selfish, bumbling Villi who once reveled in writing his mean reviews, and is now paying the price. Between author Fred Calvert’s vivid descriptions, and the illustrations by A.B. Vance, the reader will become happily immersed in the fantasy world of “Maestro! Maestro!”