Hoping to reconnect with his music and shatter the artistic block that's plagued his career, Stephen Hoffman, a young American piano prodigy, ventures to Vienna in the spring of 1986. He is assigned to an elderly vocal teacher, Professor Josef Mashkan, who gives Stephen the "Dichterliebe" song cycle by Robert Schumann. Although Stephen resents having to study simple vocal accompaniment, he slowly realizes that he is in the hands of a master-teacher. eventually, only music, their one common bond, helps release the burning emotions of the teacher and helps melt the frigidity of the student.

Old Wicked Songs was the 1996 Pulitzer Prize Finalist for Drama, winner of New York Drama League, L.A. Drama Logue Award, included in Otis Guernsey's Best Plays of 1996-97. First presented by the Walnut Street Theatre, then in NYC by Daryl Roth at Playhouse 91, it then moved to the Promenade Theater. In England, Old Wicked Songs started at the Bristol Old Vic, transferring to London's West End at the Gielgud Theater, starring Bob Hoskins. The play has been produced throughout the United States and translated and produced in a dozen countries around the world.