She watched him get ready in the dressing room, shirt off, trousers off, a stripping-down and dressing-up, a practised transformation.
She sat on a chair talking about the news, another suicide bomber in Jerusalem, the weather, anything. He seemed to be listening and managed replies that were quite thoughtful, though all the time she could tell he was somewhere else. She wanted to be released, allowed to suffer her nerves in private out in the foyer with the milling people, or on the concourse in front of the Festival Hall, anywhere but here. But he seemed to need her, wanted her around and didn’t mind if she talked nonsense, or just sat there, raising her eyebrows, smiling, looking at the clock, stomach churning, sipping at a glass of white wine that John Sampson had sweetly brought backstage. John was gleaming with excitement and pride. ‘Full house. I saw Gerry Mandelson, Vladek Notar, Cosima Whatserarse.’ He snapped a finger. ‘Fat soprano features . . .’
Ursulalaughed.
‘She’ll need two seats. Mikhael Aronowitz. Oodles of young lovelies. Are you all right?’
‘Vadim’s cutting it fine.’
‘Oh, sorry.’ John touched his forehead. ‘Called this morning to say out of sorts. Could you do the whole concert?’
‘What!’ Ursula was aghast.
John’s face collapsed with amusement.
‘John,’ she swiped at him. ‘You devil!’
Philip turned away, adjusting his bow tie.
‘The word’s got round about Philip.’ He was serious now. ‘There’s a head of steam out there. Pip, you’ll be brill. I’ll get out of your hair.’ He glanced at Ursula. ‘Before he does a Bruno Gillespie on the new suit.’
‘Bruno Gillespie?’ she enquired.
‘He puked on me before an Albert Hall gig. Trashed a brand-new Turnbull & Asser shirt. That’s got to be worth twenty per cent.’
Philip smiled. He was working his hands, massaging the muscles and joints. The plan had changed so that he and Vadim would start the recital together, a duet, after Benno Alexandrovich had given an introductory speech commemorating Serebriakov, explaining the change of programme and introducing the artists. They had yet to rehearse and the plan was to run through it on the upright in Philip’s room when Vadim arrived. They could probably wing it.
‘If he’s late, drop the duet,’ said Ursula.
Philip breathed in and out deeply.
She had spent the last two days at his place, acting maidservant and helpmeet, shopping, cooking, running errands, taking messages, talking when he needed to talk, being out of sight and behind scenes when he needed to practise, which he did single-mindedly right through Monday afternoon and evening till 10 p.m., and then off again the next morning. He said it was much easier doing half a concert, but he was cutting it fine on the Chopin, certain passages in the scherzo bothering him, and couldn’t get what he wanted in the opening movement, which was more a question of flow and integration. He played the work in slow motion, repeated sections a dozen times, broke off to play scales, thirds, octaves. She was amazed by the energy that poured through the piano and by how much sound was unleashed into the house. His coruscating scales and arpeggios were generated by huge reserves of focused physical energy, a current held in control, but almost frightening to behold when he played. His Rachmaninov B minor Prelude was there right off, immense, gigantically sonorous in the middle section, knocked off first time at the height of declamation. She could see he was enjoying getting his fingers into the keys.
Off the keyboard he seemed quiet, mildly preoccupied, as though husbanding resources. He lay down twice during the day and slept for an hour. In the afternoon on Tuesday they walked in the park and he seemed to enjoy the rose garden and waterfall, pointing things out, recalling stories. He was not quite the same as the man she had walked with in Sussex. He seemed alive with secret purpose, and occasionally his attention wandered when she spoke, but he always came back to her, was attentive, aware of her importance to him.
Over dinner the day before the concert he spoke about Chopin’s music, explaining how Chopin’s melodic line was fraught with accidentals, notes that are not part of the scale of a given key, but which fall between those notes and must push up or lean down in order to resolve. So many melodies or decorative fioriture were threaded with these accidentals it was as if Chopin craved the subtle pain and exquisite resolution they gave. Feeling had to be wrung out in some way, made to hurt. ‘He inscribed suffering in his music. It was what he had become after all. But no self-pity, no sentimentality. He had the courage and the stoicism to depict the utterly tragic. Take the end of the Fourth Ballade, for example. After everything that work contains he ends it with such definitive and utter despair that is even more tragic in implication than effect.’
He released her at twenty-five-past seven. Vadim was still getting changed, and it looked as though they would scrap the duet as an opener.
The Russian came into the dressing room, hugged Philip, kissed Ursula, begged to be forgiven, made a great business of his injured arm, but glowed with excitement and energy.
‘I have Nurofen,’ he said. ‘Improve neuro-transmission. Guaranteed no mistakes.’
‘Vadim!’ She smiled. She found him very charismatic. His eyes were full of mischief. He could do a kind of bravura chivalry when in the mood.
‘Philip, sorry about the other night.’ He whistled and raised his eyebrows.
‘I heard about that,’ she said. ‘Very laddish.’
‘Sociologically interesting,’ said the Russian.
‘I’ll bet!’
‘You don’t like sociology?’
‘It was full of sociology students, was it?’
Vadim shrugged innocently. ‘Philip says I should widen my horizon.’
‘Get dressed!’
He touched his half-buttoned shirt. ‘Good idea.’
Philip gave her a flat look when Vadim had gone.
‘Are you going to stay in here or watch him play?’
‘I might listen from the stage door.’
She kissed him, squeezed his hands. ‘OK.’
She felt hardly less nervous slipping through the auditorium, already half full, into the foyer. The gong was going. People were drifting to the doors. The bar was deserted. There were all kinds of faces, civilised faces, elderly Mittel European-type faces, eccentric, distinguished faces, young men with spectacles, girls in long dresses, the ranged middle classes, scented, measured, discriminating, now filtering into the expectant space of the auditorium. It was not the world, just a cross-section of music lovers who had come out that night with informed interest, knowledgeable listeners ready to concentrate hard for a couple of hours, because this was a part of their culture - a moment of musical history that could never be repeated.
She could sense the anticipation. She experienced more intensely than ever the burden of expectation focused on the empty stage, on the lone piano, on the evening’s performers hidden backstage. With what confidence this crowd expected to be served by Vadim and Philip, who were only humans like the rest of them but would soon be tested by hundreds of ears, and whose playing would be completely exposed down there. With what confidence they must face the challenge, even while their hands shook and their hearts beat hard.
Friends called out to her as she moved down the aisle. Very few people knew about her and Philip, but she sensed from somewhere an awareness that she was specially connected to the hero of the evening, or to one of them. She sat down with a weird feeling almost of bridal pride, as if she in her way were part of this effort, this extraordinary production. She felt momentarily self-conscious as John, sitting across the aisle, pointed her out to a neighbour. What did it mean to be associated with a man everybody had come to see, to be the maestro’s girlfriend, that special person?
Her heart beat fast. She felt for Philip, backstage, going through it for the entire first half, and then suffering the inevitable comparison with Vadim. She was full of curiosity for how Vadim would play. It was almost unbearable waiting f
or him to appear. She wanted the concert to start. She wanted it to be over. How could they endure such tension, poor lambs? What courage you needed to get through this hell?
When the lights dimmed, her heartbeat accelerated as if this marked the point of no return. She drew back her hair, pursed her lips, felt as though she were dissolving; and then Benno came on and the sense of occasion mounted, and he stood at the front of the stage, short, dignified, waiting for the audience’s full attention, the stage lights warm behind him ready for the soloists; and when he spoke his voice was soft but carrying, almost confidential, grave. He must have been nervous, seeking the right words, talking of a legend, a figure of such global stature, and connecting the importance of that man, so loved and mourned, to the special task of the pianists tonight: to commemorate his art and to carry the torch. He craved indulgence for changes to the programme and to the scheduled concert and thanked the artists in advance for gearing their preparations to this special occasion. He concluded by saying that Serebriakov did not see classical music as a privilege but as a necessity, ‘and hence my deep and personal gratitude to the great performers we are going to hear tonight’.
Ursula brushed a tear from her eye and watched in dumb suspense as Benno left the stage and the lights came down a notch, and the wait for Vadim began. She heard the applause before she saw him, and suddenly he was there, crossing the stage quickly, a large figure, masterful, energetic, coming authoritatively forward into the blaze of applause, bowing, deadpan, but hugely focused, getting on with it, and then he turned and the clapping subsided, and her heart was in her mouth as she saw him ready himself on the stool, handkerchief tossed inside the piano, cuffs touched, and suddenly he was off, straight in, hands into the keys, wrists low, minimal movement, vibrating out the soft rapid C major chords of the Waldstein Sonata, his energy released into the auditorium instantly; and as her nervousness converted to spellbound involvement, and Vadim seemed possessed by the spirit of music, its bristling vitality and headlong impetus, recreating the adventure of the piece in his own terms, discovering bar by bar its turns and flourishes, so that Beethoven as they listened was coming up as if for the first time: as she listened to all this on the edge of her seat already, watching him transformed by concentration, a different person, she was excited and humbled and almost ashamed by the accident of her meagre acquaintance with such a consummate talent; and as the movement progressed and he continued to heighten his grip on everything that passed in the stream of sound, she looked at his focused profile, so alien to her now, with the admiration of a stranger, as though she could never know personally the real being who played like this, could know him only in this state of enthralment, sharing his possession, submitting to it, feeling the full marvellous force of his intelligence as it drove his fingers forward. This then was Vadim, living life a million times faster than all of them - wondrous, awesome, utterly enslaving.
She wondered, after the Waldstein, how Philip could possibly follow on from this, and felt almost guilty at the thought and distressed about not dissuading him. He was a great pianist, too, different to Vadim. He would find his way, she hoped. He was not strong; mentally he was not strong; he was living on the edge of a precipice, and throughout the Funeral March Sonata, which Vadim played with such command and electricity and dark colouring, she was unable to take her mind off the prospect of Philip’s playing, the awful vulnerability of his arrival on the platform, the agony of self-possession required, the whole hazard of finding concentration equal to his talent, and the occasion, and what had gone before. It turned her stomach. The moment was drawing closer, and every second Vadim was growing stronger. When the Funeral March came, she found tears in her eyes again; how gravely Vadim participated in all the music could mean; how profoundly it struck her now, the reality of this music; and then in the finale she became torpid, almost drained, so utterly exhausted by tension and emotion that when the applause started she could hardly bring herself to clap, but just listened instead to the wild frenzy of release around her, the hard clapping, as if the audience were determined to refract and discharge the energy Vadim had transmitted, to pay him back for as long as it would take to recover from the shock of his brilliance.
She gathered herself slowly, people pushing past her. She was dreading the task ahead.
She must go to see him. She must get him through the interval.
The applause hit him hard, deafening, people rising, already standing, and he had not played a note, the encouragement was startling, a barrage of welcome. He bowed slowly, taking it in, looking to the back, aware of friendly faces with smiles and raised hands, cheering him on; and he nodded and acknowledged, hands gripped tight, feeling rather weird, even light-headed, hoping it would settle, or sharpen up when he was facing the keyboard, that long-awaited moment.
He flicked his tails back over the stool. He felt good doing that, in charge, and prepared himself, audience hushing down, the last moments before commitment was irreversible, important not to rush, to try and get an image, the sound and flow of the piece in his head already. He remembered telling himself that he had everything to offer and nothing to fear, that he was unique in his way and must now just relax, be himself, as though alone. He felt a tremor in his hands as he raised them, but they did what he wanted with that first phrase, and now he was locked in the moment-to-moment of it, the hot burning awareness of the sound he was making, the dotted phrase, so melancholy, travelling out now. The keys were easier than he remembered. They depressed as he wished and his fingers seemed at last comfortable, even though he was constantly adjusting to the acoustic, his intimate relation to sounds travelling hundreds of feet and heard at a distance, qualified here and there by a cough or a rustle. He had to loosen up a little. The phrasemaking was becoming tight, and yet this tightness was his arm’s way of staying in control. There would come a point when he would feel as he played, but he had to be careful, modest, because not everything seemed ready yet; perhaps reflexes were slower now. He must find his way.
The fortissimo section was secure, well graded, and it was good to leap at those chords, to embed one’s fingers deeply, allowing the muscles of his hand to tense at full strength, recovering command, but as the piece moved to its second summit he felt that he had lost his sensitivity to something, and that the pulse was false and the sound did not carry properly. And, as he played the climax of semiquavers that spilled from the top of the piano, like a million leaves falling through the air and being tricked with by the wind, stirred into flurries before dispersing, the audience seemed remote, like the painting of a crowd in the corner of his eye, and he sensed he had lost their energy: suddenly they were not helping him. He strived to listen harder, to envelop himself in the acoustic - although now the sense of disembodied sound, sound travelling out beyond his control, was distracting, as though his perspective and the audience’s were at odds.
The applause after the second Rachmaninov Prelude was warm, still committed, so something was going on. He bowed quickly and thought distractedly of Vadim, whom he had hugged after the first half, tears in his eyes. One of them at least would have been great tonight. He had to take strength from that shattering performance of the Funeral March Sonata. There was a current of something that he could still latch on to.
He felt even more frustrated with the Schubert, as though the Impromptu did not allow something he could do and required something he could not do. His dynamics were too familiar to him, the colour changes a rehash, and now that the piece was launched, going smoothly and uninterestingly along, it was too late to stop and come back in the right groove: and as he played, concentrating for all he was worth, the awful feeling came over him that time was slipping away, concert time, during which nothing much was happening to him or anyone, and that he had to abandon something in order not to be bored with this relationship.
He went off stage this time, to allow the audience a break. He took a sip of water from a plastic beaker, felt them waiting for him but not tensely enou
gh, as if they were still recovering from the impact of Vadim’s playing and having trouble concentrating; and he suffered a stab of anguish at the thought that this was his great moment, possibly his last concert, and that his desperate desire to do something special had been an impossible dream, and he now had the sense of having to fight through the feeling, on top of everything else, that the whole opportunity was sliding away. He tried to focus - the B minor Sonata ahead of him, the Funeral March Sonata behind him. He tried to remember his sense of the two pieces, Serebriakov’s words, his own ideas, but the thread of all that was irretrievable, a million miles away now, and when he went back out, he stepped on to the stage with a sinking heart, thinking that this performance was bound to be mediocre; even his nerves were insufficient, and a horrible lassitude broke over him as he went across the platform to renewed applause, this time less ecstatic, and took his seat again, gazing at the keyboard with forlorn uncertainty. He could tell already. It wasn’t there. The atmosphere was slack. He sat waiting, a long wait. Waiting for quiet, and beyond quiet for absolute silence, pin-drop tension mounting all the time, intensifying suddenly to a pitch he could no longer bear. Now he had them. Now the current was live.
Later, in bed, in the small hours, going through every inch of the recital in his head, he recalled the clarity of that moment, becoming fully awake in sharpened light, a way to attack the phrase, fingers curled, a falling arpeggio, then driving chords, martial, propulsive, getting stuck in and meaning business with the instrument - something came over him or into him. At the time, it felt like rage.
He was going at it much harder and faster than planned, and this was disconcerting because adrenalin had to do it now, lift agility and reflexes through the awkwardnesses of the opening page: semiquaver fourths, contrary-motion arpeggios, he saw them coming and going within his compass, playing of bite and energy and dispatch, the geography of the keyboard, spaces and intervals, coming into muscular focus, every note struck in the centre, the tone penetrating, yes, a plangent intensity that was his hallmark sound reaching out, grabbing the audience; and then the tender flow of the second-subject aria, a slight relaxation, but a long way to go yet, and now the half-tones and inner melodies and liquid accompaniment, the sense of provisional homecoming, Chopin at his most fulfilled and expressive.
The Concert Pianist Page 26