An Equal Music, Vikram Seth
This lives up to its praise; reminded me of
The Gold Bug Variations,
although Seth's plot and prose are more realistic. It isn't just the
centrality of music, it's the whole elegiac tone of the book.
I was also tidily surprised by at least one major plot twist, as Seth had
been dragging a red herring about so effectively.
So wrote clew in
Fiction (20th c.).