DISTURBANCE OF THE INNER EAR

by Joyce Hackett

Carroll & Graf, 277 pp. $25

The world of classical music, that ever-fertile material for fiction, has been particularly well served in recent years. Ann Patchett's PEN/Faulkner-winning "Bel Canto" (2001), Rose Tremain's Whitbread-laureled "Music & Silence" (1999) and J.D. Landis' "Longing" (2000) have yielded an abundance of literary riches.

Although each novel's premises differ - from Patchett's opera devotees held hostage by South American revolutionaries to Tremain's 17th century Danish court intrigues to Landis' 19th century love triangle of Robert and Clara Schumann and Brahms - music remains the common denominator. Music as source of ineffable beauty, of course, but also as creative discipline, as spawning ground of rivalries, as "the food of love" and more.

To this list of excellent books now must be added "Disturbance of the Inner Ear," an uncommonly accomplished first novel. Joyce Hackett employs a lush and perfectly pitched lyricism to tell her tale of a floundering one-time cello prodigy. Her talent for the apt metaphor is virtuosic. Music provides this writer not only with an engrossing story but the images to give it extraordinary emotional resonance.

Hackett's protagonist, Isabel Masurovsky, began cello lessons in New Jersey at age 4 under her father, Yuri, whose talent at the piano had saved him during the Holocaust. At 15, Isabel debuted at Carnegie Hall, receiving a standing ovation and roses from Mstislav Rostropovich himself. At 16, she won Moscow's Tchaikovsky competition. But by the time she turns 26, when the novel opens, she has crash-landed and given up performing altogether.

Most of the novel is set in Milan, home town of Signor Perso, the aging Italian who became Isabel's mentor, father figure and lover following the death of her parents in a car accident on the day of her Carnegie Hall triumph. The 77-year-old Perso, who had taught her so much about living, has now died, and Isabel has nowhere to turn. Utterly alone and virtually penniless, she agrees to give viola lessons to the troubled teenage son of an American diplomat in exchange for room and board.

An eccentric millionaire and music lover, Cornelius Godfrey Pettyward ("Call me God") owns one of the world's rarest and finest cellos. The so-called Savant, a prized Amati hand-crafted in the 1560s, is not supposed to be taken out of Pettyward's palazzo. When Isabel sneaks out the instrument to play at Perso's memorial service, the consequences are at once poignant, comical and momentous. Above all, they launch Guilio Savagente, an ebullient young Lothario of a plastic surgeon, into her life.

Besides stylish prose, Hackett's forte is the composition of scenes adroitly evoking her protagonist's jumble of conflict-ing emotions. Her wisdom lies in underscoring the push and pull of ambiguity.

Flashbacks reveal the burden that the well-meaning Yuri bestowed on his daughter. The musicianship, disci-pline, tenacity and guile that helped him survive Ther-esienstadt rendered him a mono-maniacal father. "One thing you learn with a father like Yuri," Isabel muses, "is that to allow yourself to be pitied is the beginning of the end."

Since Isabel's easygoing mother, Renata, an Italian-born mezzo- soprano, was often away on tour, the girl was left with Yuri the taskmaster. However harsh, his regimen worked, honing a little girl into a prodigy: "Getting woken up with a pitcher of ice water at dawn makes breaking a string in front of the queen of England, later that same day, seem like a minor impediment. ... The point is, Yuri tried to protect me ... the safety net he bound us in kept the world at bay."

Once all her loved ones are gone, however, Isabel cannot bear the tumult of feelings aroused by Guilio, who pursues her with Marcello Mastroianni charm. Though he initially seems a womanizing cad, Hackett portrays him as a complicated soul, bearing wounds of his own. Sly words are but the camouflage he hides behind. "I don't lie to anybody except Daphne [an alleged fiancee who probably does not exist]," he insinuates to a wary Isabel. "I'm faithful that way."

The author puts dialogue this telling into the mouths of every character, not only the witty Guilio but also the creepy Mr. Pettyward, his troubled son and the faux sophisticate who turns out to be the ex-Mrs. Pettyward. Hackett creates seduction scenes that make us laugh even as we worry how the fragile Isabel will survive them, startling turning points when her world is shattering, breath-taking moments of music-making.