The photostats were precious indeed, for the agreement with the ministry stipulated that the printed score must be embargoed until the day of the premiere. Now Willy Strecker had asked Ulli to write two letters to accompany them. One would go to Jelly in England; the other to California for Yehudi Menuhin. Jelly could make a start. Menuhin could make a decision.
‘I worry about Miss d’Arányi… ’ Ulli faltered.
‘She will have it for Britain.’
‘We promised her.’
‘And we are keeping our promise. But we are looking ahead as well, no? Jelly d’Arányi’s best days are behind her. Yehudi’s are still to come, and soon.’
That, Ulli acknowledged silently, was part of the problem. ‘The thing is, Miss d’Arányi – ’
Willy gave him a wink. ‘I should never have let you go to London that time. You’ve not been the same since. I hope you realise that that woman is the most famous flirt in the music world. She has been bewitching every man who crosses her path for more than 20 years. Ah well, perhaps it’ll do you good. Now, if you please, the letters… Then bring them to me.’
Ulli, puzzled, followed his boss’s instructions. ‘Don’t you want me to post them?’
‘No,’ said Willy, taking the packages from him. ‘A friend of mine happens to be going by train to Metz tomorrow.’
‘France?’
‘You see?’
Ulli saw. Interception in the post of a great German concerto heading out of its home country to some Jewish recipients could prove a risk too far, even for them.
*
Later, he took the third copy home on his bicycle. After a quick supper of soup, bread and cheese, he closed his windows and curtains and sat down at his Bechstein. If only he had a violinist – well, Jelly – to read the concerto with him. Some of his colleagues had attended a private run-through at Dr Lenzewski’s house and came back raving about the piece’s depth and beauty, insisting that Joachim must have been out of his mind to agree it should be put away. Ulli had been ill in bed and missed the evening. In his more morose moments, he felt he missed life’s treats a little too often.
While he played, he tried to sing the violin part, or whistle it; the score was intense and full of counterpoint. He hadn’t been practising enough. If he could accompany Jelly, he’d practise four hours a day. The concerto’s substance was another matter. He had worked on the edition in such detail and for so long that he had lost perspective on it; playing through from start to finish might restore that, with luck. Deep, yes; beautiful, yes; but if Goebbels thought this would be a replacement for everyone’s favourite Mendelssohn, he might need to think again.
Mendelssohn’s concerto flowed naturally and felt effortless; Schumann’s didn’t state, but searched. Mendelssohn flew and dived and looped the loop for his audience; Schumann plunged off the forest path, lost in contemplation. Ulli sensed, through his long and deepening acquaintance with the piece, that it could burrow into your soul and steal it. But he could not help wondering how it would strike those encountering it for the very first time. What if Goebbels did not consider it strong enough? What would be the repercussions for those at Schott’s who had thought it was?
With any luck, Goebbels, as propaganda man, was less interested in the music than in how he could manipulate its story. Assuming they could pass that hurdle, what mattered longer term for Schott’s was the response of violinists and whether they would want to take it up. Jelly was a given; Menuhin was the real test. If he didn’t like it, the Streckers might consider the exercise had been pointless. And from what he could hear, through his own unsatisfactory strumming, Ulli feared that violinists might not after all flock to play this piece; it was too complex, too flawed, too unsettling. If Menuhin were to play it and enthuse about it, his approbation would encourage anyone with reservations to rethink. Yet if he received all the credit that should have been Jelly’s, then her heart would be broken – again – and Ulli would feel responsible. She couldn’t compete with Menuhin any more than Kulenkampff could. He was in no position either to prevent or to cushion that blow.
The decisive letter came sooner than he expected. In California, Yehudi was officially on holiday. A ‘sabbatical’ at the family home outside Santa Cruz. Ulli imagined the youth practising in a studio flooded with sunlight. As he read Yehudi’s words, he wondered why he had ever doubted the outcome. Menuhin understood the work straight away, as perhaps nobody else would; he saw its greater significance, too. He had played it through with his sister, Hephzibah, and found it romantic, mature, sorrowful, profound; he had no doubt that it was ‘the missing link’ in the violin concerto repertoire between Beethoven and Brahms. And of course he wanted to give the modern-day world premiere.
*
It was on the doormat with the third post. A flat parcel bearing, oddly, a set of French stamps. Jelly cradled it unopened, trying to preserve the final moment before she saw the Schumann Violin Concerto for the first time.
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Adila grabbed the package and slashed at the wrapping with scissors. Out it slid: the notes on the pages shone like black pearls. ‘What are you waiting for? Let’s go and try it.’
‘In a moment.’ Jelly took a minute to collect herself, pressing the score to her heart.
Adila, though she was no expert pianist, went to the Bechstein and tried to play a skeleton of the reduced score. The first movement. A surge of energy at the opening: a taut-strung rhythm, a long, jagged theme over a tense accompaniment. ‘TAA – DAA – ta-tii – ti-daa… ’ Adila sang while her hands crashed around on the keyboard.
Jelly prepared to play her first notes, which entered before the orchestral paragraph was finished, commenting, echoing, then wandering into the discursive trails of a melody that arched like a hothouse creeper, climbing as if seeking the light. Tears oozed down her nose as her fingers and bow felt their way forward. Finally the longed-for concerto was in her hands, yet she found she was doubting her own capacity to play it. Her injuries, illness and arm problems had left her lacking her old assurance; she had cancelled concerts and lost others; her records, it seemed, were not selling so well now, while buyers flocked instead to grab those by Fritz Kreisler, Jascha Heifetz and, of course, Yehudi Menuhin. Ten or fifteen years ago, the world’s greatest composers were queuing up to write new works for her. Four years ago the public had thronged to her cathedral concerts: young and elderly, wealthy and impoverished alike. Would they still? She had been reluctant to admit, even to herself, the degree of hope that she was investing in the Schumann Violin Concerto as the vehicle that could rescue her. She had thought she was saving it. Perhaps the truth was the other way around.
‘Bloody hell!’ Adila grumbled. ‘I can’t play this. You need a proper pianist.’
Jelly, notes somersaulting in front of her eyes, was trying to navigate the theme’s progress through Schumann’s twisting branches. It was dark in this woodland, she sensed; he, too, was trying to find his way. Ulli was a fine pianist. If only he’d brought it to her himself, they could have read it through together.
The curve of contrast came back, deep down: a contralto, as if singing words of good sense from Schumann’s sane self, perhaps from Clara. How could someone supposedly losing his faculties write music of such raw tenderness?
‘Slow movement,’ suggested Adila. ‘Easier.’
A few seconds in, though, Jelly understood that it wasn’t. The melody was there, yet not there. It began after another theme in the orchestra, led by a solo cello, but then fragmented: hinted at, displaced. And it was as if she knew it already, as if she knew how it should go, yet it didn’t, not quite. The violin line meandered, and that second theme of the first movement had seeded itself here too, twining through the music in the form of an innocuous, almost imperceptible link from lower register to upper.
‘Sai, you are hopeless.’ Adila yawned while Jelly flopped into a chair. ‘How can you cry now?’
‘Adi, how can you not cry now?’
‘I’m not you. B
ut, you know? It’s just come back to me.’
‘What has?’
‘I think… perhaps Onkel Jo played me this. I feel as if I’ve heard it, and I have an image of him in my mind… let me concentrate… ’ Adila put on her psychic ‘sensitive’ expression. ‘I am sure he played me this, or something very like it.’
‘I remember something too, somehow… ’
The melody seemed familiar, as if she’d heard it somewhere before, long ago. No! It was Myra. That was it. Myra had played her a Schumann theme on which she said Brahms had written variations. It wasn’t the same, but it was remarkably similar. There, it was defined, hymn-like, complete. Here, Schumann was hinting at it, trying to grasp it, yet it eluded him. ‘Brahms,’ Jelly declared. ‘That’s why we know it. It’s nothing to do with Onkel Jo. Come on, let’s try the last movement.’
She stood. A transition from the slow movement, and then the Alla polacca – the Polonaise – loomed on the page, the instruction printed above an ant-heap of notes. She knew about this Polonaise, theoretically. Its silhouette, too, looked oddly familiar; soon she knew why. It was that same melody from the first movement, the one that curled towards an invisible sun, and now, at last, it broke through the canopy of leaves into the blue heavens, transformed. The spirit, transmuted. The earth shaken away, the essence flying out.
‘Slower,’ said Adila. ‘The metronome mark. Look.’ She tapped the number on the page.
‘That slow?’ Jelly was amazed; it sounded odd, anything but dance-like, at such a stately tempo. But so instructed Schumann…
They started again, Jelly laughing through her tears, Adila swearing in Hungarian. It was a triumphant end, this polonaise: a victory after a great struggle. The music grew more complicated, with virtuoso passagework that would have shown off Onkel Jo’s abilities, the piano twittering and trilling beneath, yet it seemed as if love, the spirit, life itself, must win eventually.
Their last note was together, but soon their laughter was louder than the music had been, and at an optimistic guess, Adila had hit one right note in every ten. Jelly needed someone who could do better.
While she was wondering where to turn next, the phone in front of her rang and there, at the end of it, was –
‘Donald! The very person! Darling, how did you know to call me now?’
‘Hush, Jelly… What’s going on?’
‘Wherever you are, can I come and see you? And can I bring the Schumann? It just arrived. We read it, Adi and me, and it’s – it’s so beautiful – but Adi’s not… I mean, I need a pianist. Will you play it with me?’
Tovey didn’t flinch. ‘Clara and I are off to Norfolk soon. When can you join us?’
‘Oh, Donald,’ Jelly was fighting tears. ‘I can’t stand the idea of it being captured by those terrible people in Germany… ’
‘There, there,’ he soothed. ‘It’s not your child, you know. It’s still a concerto and you can still play it. Come and play it with me. And I’ll be curious to know what Hindemith has done to it. He’s a fine composer, but do you like his changes?’
Jelly stalled. She had her doubts about the adaptations and needed time to explore them more closely. The edition made clear where, and what, the differences were, though without indicating who had made them or why. Kulenkampff was apparently making a private edition of his own; therefore so could she. She hankered for the glass, in case there were messages – from Schumann, from Onkel Jo, maybe from Sep too – that could help her navigate through it.
‘And don’t obsess over those “spirits” of yours,’ was Tovey’s parting shot.
*
It was a little late for that advice. Jelly, at home more often since her injuries, was at Adila and Erik’s side day after day, for the messages from the glass now began to go into a startling amount of detail about violinistic ways to improve on the original concerto. Schumann apparently was not happy with Hindemith’s interference, one message declaring the results ‘not his technique’.
‘Don’t touch the glass,’ Adila ordered Jelly. ‘There must be no suggestion you influenced what the messages say.’
Jelly, taking notes but leaving the interpretation strictly to Adila and Erik, watched in incredulity as her sister encouraged, questioned and received word after astonishing word. Her pen at the ready, she watched the glass moving through the shadows, and scribbled down the letters. ‘Use your judgement about bowing and often broaden the tone… ’ the glass instructed. ‘Keep your outbursts as a complete surprise. Your uncle knew that secret.’
‘We must stop now,’ Adila sometimes exclaimed. ‘I’m exhausted! You’ve no idea how tiring this is.’
‘Just two more minutes?’ Jelly would plead. When the pointer moved to ‘Goodbye’ and the light went on again, she felt bereft, desperate for the next instalment.
‘Stop panicking, Sai,’ Adila laughed. ‘Just go and write it all into your fiddle part.’
*
If only the performance plans could be progressing as smoothly; instead, she felt trapped in an administrative nightmare. At first Kulenkampff’s concert was set for September 1937. Jelly conferred with Adrian Boult and they fixed upon a date for her premiere at the Queen’s Hall in late September – which coordinated beautifully with the likely release of Erik’s book by Constable Press. Then came the startling news from Schott that the Germans had postponed Kulenkampff’s performance. Now she and Boult were obliged to change their date because Kulenkampff had to be first. Everything was duly rescheduled for October, with Jelly’s performance three days after the German concert. But there was worse: according to Boult, apparently Yehudi Menuhin had somehow heard about the concerto, wanted to play it too, and didn’t like the idea that anybody else might come before him.
‘He wants to play it everywhere,’ Jelly told Tovey, fighting her own fury, trying to keep her voice calm. ‘And I have absolutely no idea how he got hold of it!’
‘It’s called publishing. Schott’s is a commercial company and they’ll wish to ensure as many performances as possible, in as many territories as possible,’ Tovey pointed out. ‘They’ll be eyeing America. You mustn’t take it personally.’
It must have been Ulli. The same man who had gone to the Nazi top dogs with his bosses and overstepped the mark, nearly getting himself sacked, to fight her corner. But he’d have been under strict instructions. He was on her side. She had to believe that; it was all she had to hold on to.
She’d thought Menuhin a violin prophet, a miracle of an artist. Now her arteries threatened to rupture at the sound of his name. If she were not to be the first violinist outside Germany to play the concerto, any hope was gone that it might re-establish her in the glory days of Ravel’s Tzigane and Bartók’s sonatas. The wunderkind could simply snatch the piece from her, and there seemed no way to stop him. ‘I could have gone to America myself,’ she protested.
‘Jelly, don’t take on so,’ Tovey advised. ‘Come to Norfolk and bring the Schumann, as soon as you feel ready. We’ve waited long enough for it. Now let’s spend a few minutes enjoying it.’
Chapter 13
Deep in the countryside, Tovey and his wife, Clara, had a house they regarded as their real home. Hedenham Lodge was in a secluded spot, difficult to access. This, Tovey admitted, was half the point. The sole good thing about his ‘year off’ in ’32 recovering from his heart issues, he said, was that he could spend most of it there. It was a graceful place, early 18th century, set into a rich and soggy lawn and surrounded by brambleful hedgerows, shrubbish hawthorn and ancient trees bowing under the weight of their own leaves. Jelly liked to imagine Jane Austen characters flitting about the slender-framed drawing room, or leaning on the windowsills to enjoy the soft air that drifted in from the Broads.
Tovey was nearly 62. Jelly still thought of him as a perpetual thirtysomething, as he was when she first knew him: his intellect still flamed like a crêpe Suzette. But even she could not deny that his physical state was changing with the years. Either his spine was less s
traight, or his tall-person’s stoop might have grown more pronounced.
‘I don’t mind being slightly closer in size to you,’ he told her, when she pressed him about his health. ‘What I do mind is what’s happening to my hands.’
The swelling around his knuckles was pronounced, shockingly so. ‘Does it hurt?’
‘I wish I could be brave and say it doesn’t. But it does. It hurts rather a lot. What hurts most is that it’s becoming more difficult to play the piano. I shall have to follow the example of Clara and stick to late Brahms.’
‘I didn’t realise she played.’
‘Schumann’s Clara. When she was changing from guardian angel to glorious grandma, Brahms wrote intermezzos, rhapsodies and the like for her to play, which weren’t technically complex, but could not be bettered in terms of profundity. I shall be very happy with them, assuming I can even manage that.’
‘You are a wonderful pianist – you will be fine.’
‘Dear Jelly.’ Tovey leaned down and kissed her forehead.
Jelly wondered what could make the difference: perhaps just the growth of a microscopic sliver of bone. Could something indiscernible to the human eye become a tipping point, switching you from one state to another – Tovey from a day when he could play his piano, if with difficulty, to one on which he could not? It was so alarming that she tucked his arm through hers to banish the notion.
Clara had made a sponge cake, which Jelly enjoyed with gusto after her journey; at the kitchen table they chatted about family matters and life at Hurricane House. Jelly had to break the news to the Toveys that things at home were not what they had been. Soon the house would feel emptier than she had ever known it. Caesar, their beloved fox terrier, had passed away in his basket at a ripe old dog age of 15. And to her distress and Adila’s, Alec had decided that in September Adrienne, who was nearly 12, must be sent away to school. They were dreading it, for much of the house’s internal sunshine came from the lively, lovely girl who wasn’t so little any more, yet was still small enough for them to spoil. The school was far away in Somerset.
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