It’s 1989, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall. American conducting student Cooper Barrow arrives in West Germany to study under master conductor Herr Ziegler. Barrow is returning to the craft after dropping out of Juilliard and spending eight years teaching violin in a small town in upstate New York. While in Germany, he learns about music and life, both from his teacher and from the musicians he works with—especially the oboist Petra Vogel, an East German defector he falls for. Through Ziegler’s and Petra’s examples, he learns about. . .