Madame Okraska was pausing on her way from St. Petersburg to New York and this was the only concert she was to give in London that winter. For many hours the enthusiasts who had come to secure unreserved seats had been sitting on the stone stairs that led to the balcony or gallery, or on the still narrower, darker and colder flight that led to the orchestra from Piccadilly Place. From the adjacent hall they could hear the strains of the Moore & Burgess Minstrels, blatant and innocuously vulgar; and the determined mirth, anatomized by distance, sounded a little melancholy.
The destructive relationship between a concert pianist and her young protégée: such is the plot of a bestselling novel by Anne Douglas Sedgwick an American-born British writer. “Tante”, as well as her other works, explores the contrast in values between Americans and Europeans.