The Beethoven tour took me to a workshop and performance in Jacksonville, Florida. I had promised Amelia’s beloved nine-year-old nephew, John Douglas Stone, who lived in nearby Gainesville, that I would play one of the sonatas at his elementary school in between the two events. Giving Dougie, as Amelia called him, the choice of which piece his schoolmates would prefer, I played through all three for him ahead of time, figuring he would choose either of the tuneful sonatas Opus 109 or Opus 110. But to my surprise, he opted for the dramatic and less immediately accessible Opus 111. As Dougie listened, spellbound, to all three, it struck me that he must have inherited the musical sophistication gene present in both his Aunt Amelia and her younger brother, his father. He wanted to introduce me himself, and prepared a speech that any PR person would have heartily approved. As he came to the close of his laudatory remarks, Dougie made a sweeping gesture toward the wings and announced, in his most resonant voice, “Miss Carol Rosenberger!” Fortunately, I didn’t have to keep a straight face as I walked onstage and bowed to the applauding children.
Back in California, I played the Beethoven program at IHC, to an enthusiastic reception. Webster happened to be in LA and came to hear me play those three sonatas so familiar to us both. Despite his congratulatory hug, I sensed that he was still frightened for me. He knew all too well the risk I was taking by touring and performing in public with such a damaged playing mechanism.
A few days later, I auditioned for the British conductor Neville Marriner, who had recently become music director of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. Neville seemed to like what he heard and invited me to play the Mendelssohn A-Minor Concerto with LACO the following November.
While I caught up with my students and their progress, Amelia and I resumed our search for a place to live near Eve—a search that still wasn’t promising. Then one Sunday morning in early July, while on our way from Malibu to some appointments with realtors, we saw an open-house sign on Adelaide Place, a little cul-de-sac on the rim of Santa Monica Canyon. Amelia wanted to stop and see it.
Since Adelaide Place was a quiet street with a beautiful view of the canyon, mountains, and ocean, I figured that the house would be beyond our financial reach. But Amelia told me how often she and Doug had driven past this street on their way into town or back to Malibu, and had agreed that if they ever had to leave Malibu, this would be a lovely place to live. For that sentimental reason alone, she wanted to take a quick look.
That Sunday turned out to be the first day the house had come on the market, and Amelia and I were the first to arrive. It sat on a narrow lot and looked small from the outside. But when we walked in, we saw a large living room that would certainly accommodate the nine-foot Steinway. And the canyon-mountain view from the living-room windows was spectacular. The house also had two separate bedroom-study “suites”—one at the front and one at the back. And even though it was indeed a modest-sized house, it amazingly had the essentials we were looking for. The asking price was $80,000, but the owners were willing to come down to $78,000. And it was a block away from Eve’s apartment. Excitement was mounting steadily!
I asked to use the phone and called my parents, who had already offered to help. As Depression Era veterans, they were both great believers in owning the roof over one’s head. Dad had finished their place in Rancho Santa Fe and assured us that he would be ready to help fix up anything we found. He said he would drive up to Santa Monica immediately and advised us to hang around the house for a couple of hours. Amelia quickly canceled our other appointments for the day.
Once Dad arrived, things moved swiftly, and before long Amelia and I were preparing to move, aided by my ever-helpful IHC students. Eve seemed vastly relieved that we would both be close by, as her health condition continued to be worrisome.
Just a few weeks after Amelia and I had officially moved into the Adelaide house, Eve had an acute attack—of what, no one knew—and was rushed to the UCLA hospital. Her medical team ran numerous tests, but continued to have difficulty arriving at a definitive diagnosis. Amelia took a temporary leave from her work at Lathrop to be at Eve’s bedside; we were both grateful that the hospital was close by.
With her usual conversational skill, Amelia began to engage the doctors about their views on Eve’s condition. The suspense seemed to drag on and on, and when they finally arrived at a diagnosis, it was the worst possible news—a rare and then incurable disease caused by a mycobacterium called Kansasii.
Only a few cases of Kansasii had been documented in the worldwide medical literature, and in Eve’s case the prognosis was grim. According to her doctors, she probably had somewhere between a few weeks and a few months to live.
How could this be? Suddenly Amelia and I were moving around in a trembling state that felt like slow motion, and there was only one place in the world—Eve’s hospital room. It was there that the three of us tried to process the devastating news. Eve had insisted on knowing everything at every point in her illness, so no softening or fudging of the bad news was possible. All Amelia and I wanted was to give her, somehow, our combined strength, so that together the three of us might try to turn the tide, postpone the worst, or extend her life—no matter what the doctors had said.
I told Eve, in a manner meant to be reassuring, that I was planning to cancel my upcoming fall tour, since I didn’t want to leave her side. But Eve wouldn’t hear of it. “Get me out of this hospital room!” she cried. “You are the only one who can get me out of here!”
Eve had always expected me to understand how she felt about important things, since we were both Scorpios. Now she expected her fellow Scorpio to understand that the only way she could soar during her last days on earth was for me to do my part: travel to beautiful concert halls and play sublime music on her behalf.
Eve’s wish turned my focus to the preparatory pre-tour play-throughs. I was facing my second important comeback tour post-polio, after the transformative neuromuscular work with Hope, which had been going on for two years. And if I were going to do this significant tour justice, as well as symbolically getting Eve out of her hospital room, I needed to give it fierce concentration.
The play-throughs started at my parents’ home, for two groups of friends, and Dad taped the program both times so I could listen back. Amelia hosted a couple of gatherings for me to “play in” the Steinway that had been moved into the Adelaide Place living room. But finding the concert grand so much at home there and sounding so beautiful, with Eve unable to join us, was a bittersweet experience.
Just before I left for Europe, I did a play-through at Carolyn Fisher’s house. Amelia, who usually enjoyed going to Carolyn’s for my “soirées,” was with Eve in the hospital room, so I drove myself. Once I had finished playing, I fell into an unusually serious conversation with Phil Goodwin, the psychologist friend I had met—and been attracted to—many years before.
Phil and I had maintained a special connection during the nearly ten years since my breakup with his friend Sam, and we were clearly still drawn to each other. After spending time with him over the years, I had always felt somewhat wistful. But on this evening, our connection registered in a way that felt even deeper and more important than ever. He walked me to the car when I left, and we lingered in the pleasant evening air, reluctant to see our time together come to an end. Then out of the blue, Phil asked quietly, “Carol, would you consider marrying me?”
The moment stretched in time, as I tried to absorb what Phil was saying and feeling. For all these years, perhaps he too had wondered what a relationship between us might have become. The marriage he’d been trying to save when we first met had ended permanently while I had been involved with Morrie. Might something have happened between Phil and me sooner if the timing hadn’t always been off? Finally, I just took his hands and answered, with a touch of humor, “Well . . . let’s at least have dinner!” He and I had never even gone out on a date. He seemed to understand that I meant, “I’m game to see where this might go,” and gave me a warm embra
ce.
I left for Amsterdam two days later. The first series of performances was booked by Harry de Freese in Amsterdam and the second series by Wilfred van Wyck in London. The friendly reception from the Amsterdam audience, as well as the special welcome from Harry and his family, got me off to a good start in the beautiful Small Hall of the Concertgebouw. From there I went to Frankfurt, where I played a benefit concert for physically handicapped children, under the patronage of the Princess von Hessen. My old friend Sieghart from Vienna, who was then living in Germany, came to the concert, and we went to dinner before I left. Then I went on to the other two stops on Harry’s mini-tour: Diligentia Hall in The Hague, where the audience welcomed me back with their characteristic enthusiasm, and an appearance in Zürich.
The London-based mini-tour included more benefit concerts—another positive outcome of sharing my polio story. In Manchester, I played a benefit for the British Polio Fellowship the evening before my appearance at the Lesser Free Trade Hall there. In London, I began by playing a benefit for the University College Hospital Music Society.
The all-important official concert at Wigmore Hall fell on a Sunday afternoon, November 1, my thirty-seventh birthday. The very next day, Eve’s sixty-fourth birthday, I played a benefit for a wonderful youth club called PHAB (Physically Handicapped and Able Bodied), where both groups of young people got together for enjoyable activities and became friends in the process. At the time, I had seen no such organization in the United States—a social group where the stigma of being handicapped was transcended by friendship and group camaraderie—and was deeply moved at the party after the event, when I saw the young people enjoying each other’s company with such affection and enthusiasm. I could hardly wait to report it to Eve and Amelia.
My last stop on the tour was Paris, at the Salle Gaveau, and who should come backstage afterward but Mademoiselle herself. I was glad I’d played the Beethoven Opus 111, after our history with the work. I was also glad I’d programmed the Fauré, since Mademoiselle had such a strong connection to his music. She was clearly moved to witness my comeback, and it was an emotional moment for me to have her there. There wasn’t a lot that needed to be said; we both recognized that the impossible had happened after all. Our emotions, and a few tears, spoke volumes about the journey and where, at that point, it had led.
The next day I flew back to Los Angeles, where I had much to share. Eve drank in every detail I could tell her and assured me that I had indeed gotten her out of the hospital room. She loved the PHAB story as much as I thought she would, as did Amelia. Since I had been away, Eve didn’t seem to have gone much farther downhill, at least outwardly, but this was a mysterious illness, and it was hard to tell.
Some phone messages had accumulated while I was away, and one was from Carolyn, asking for a return phone call. When I called her, she said she had sad news, and told me gently that Phil Goodwin had suffered a fatal heart attack. He hadn’t even reached fifty. I didn’t tell anyone but Amelia about my last conversation with Phil. As I grieved, I wondered if he’d had some premonition that he didn’t have much time left. Whatever it was that led him to communicate his feelings for me that evening at Carolyn’s, I have been forever grateful that he let me know, and forever glad that I answered him that evening in a receptive manner.
A few days later I began rehearsals for the concert with Neville Marriner and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, preceded by a couple of radio interviews. Neville was wonderful to work with in many ways, not the least of which was his relaxed manner, backstage and onstage. “See you afterwards,” he said that evening, with a touch of humor, as we were about to walk out onstage together. Whenever I performed with Neville in future concerts, he would make a similarly casual and amusing comment to counteract nervousness just before we walked onstage. A few days after this first concert, the well-known music critic Martin Bernheimer wrote in the Los Angeles Times: “Carol Rosenberger played the graceful, grateful solo with tremendous fluidity, poise, and clarity.”
In a few more days I was off to Boston. Before I left, Eve had assured me the performance was especially for her. The concert went exceptionally well in the New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall—a wonderfully warm and resonant space. Afterward, the backstage door opened, and there stood a tiny dark-haired woman with dancing eyes. It was Katja Andy, who had been my teacher when I was thirteen and was my only link with Edward Bredshall and those important years.
Katja had been a favorite student of the great Edwin Fischer and had become his two-piano repertoire partner and teaching assistant. When Katja had been unable to get a work permit in the UK after fleeing Nazi Germany, Fischer refused to record the major two-piano and four-hand piano repertoire—of which his interpretations were revered—with anyone else. Katja had eventually made her way to Chicago and Detroit, and Bredshall had asked her to take over his students, including me, when he went on a sabbatical. Her insights into Bach and Mozart were unique in my experience, and I had never heard anyone who so well personified “singing fingers” at the piano. She did indeed make the instrument sing! That sound had stayed with me, in my imagination, ever after.
I had tried in vain to locate Katja when I had returned to the US in 1959 and needed help in the long fight back from polio, but hadn’t known that she was teaching at the New England Conservatory. Finally, after so many years, Katja and I could reconnect as if the extended time gap between us had never existed. We had tears in our eyes as we vowed to stay in touch.
Early the next morning, I was on my way to New York. Chris met me at the airport, which was certainly not in his job description. His only concession to the cold weather was a warm wool scarf. He had a couple of interviews lined up, and I soon realized that when Chris brought me to meet a writer or a columnist, his excitement was genuine. I knew he was a fine professional, but there seemed to be a special element in his feelings for me. At one point, he mentioned something that needed to be sent to my New York address. “I don’t have a New York address,” I reminded Chris. “Yes, you do,” he exclaimed. “My apartment!”
Chris brought a large group of his own friends to the Tully Hall concert. I found that gesture alone reassuring; it helped immeasurably to counteract my long-held fear of the milestone New York appearance. I drew on my recent experiences in Holland, London, and Boston, trying to trust my carefully reconstructed neuromuscular function as well as focusing on the sound and shaping of the musical material. As the evening progressed, I began to feel more confident about what I could achieve musically. It helped that I began the program with Beethoven, including my cherished Opus 111.
After the concert, many audience members came backstage, and I enjoyed greeting them all. During a post-concert gathering, Chris and I stayed close together, and afterward talked far into the night about life and death and the sublime arts. He was one of the few people I had met who truly understood the larger picture as I saw it.
The next day I flew back to Los Angeles, and by evening was in Eve’s hospital room. Around 11:00 p.m., Eve’s bedside phone rang. It was Chris, so excited that he could barely speak. It was 2:00 a.m. Eastern time, but he had stayed up so he could go out and get The New York Times. The headline of the review read, “Carol Rosenberger Impresses at Piano Recital in Tully Hall.” Chris read the entire review first to me, then to Eve, and finally to Amelia. His voice would catch every so often, and he would stop and swallow, and then go on. He told Eve, Amelia, and me that he had never heard anyone who got the sounds out of the piano that I did. Eve said Chris made her feel as if she’d been there.
When we finally left Eve’s hospital room and headed home to Santa Monica, Amelia had something to tell me. While I was in Boston, Eve had asked her a startling question: “So, Amelia, what are you going to do with the rest of it?” Amelia said that Eve’s question kept resonating with her and was forcing her to take stock of her own life in a way she hadn’t done in a long time.
It was as if Eve had been waiting for me to return triumph
ant. Her condition went downhill rapidly, and her two sons flew out from the East Coast to spend the precious last days with her. Eve’s older son, Truman Jr., or “T” as she called him, was the first to come. “T” was my age; Eve had pointed out many times that he and I had been born in the same year, about ten days apart. Then her younger son, Scott, arrived.
Eve made it through the holiday season and into the first days of 1971. On January 7, she looked longingly at all of us gathered around her bedside and drew her last breath. Amelia told me later that I was trying to breathe for her until the end.
The memorial that Eve’s sons, Amelia, and I hosted was a celebration of Eve’s life, with her favorite music, friends, and champagne. It was exactly the kind of memorial that Eve had told us she wanted, and Amelia commented, “When I go, please, no funeral, no solemn memorial; just have such a party for me.”
Chapter Sixteen
Carnegie Hall and Amelia’s Brainstorm
A particularly lovely condolence note from Webster came at just the right moment:
Eve’s death—how really sad—and what a sense of loss it brings in its wake. . . . She was such an extraordinarily vivid person; from the moment we met . . . it was all there, suddenly, and completely . . . On many levels we seemed to speak the same language, and I think it amused both of us—at times—to strain credibility to the utmost . . . a most enchanting person. I can only try to imagine the extent to which you will miss all that she represented. . . . Wonderful, that she survived long enough to enjoy your recent scaling of the peaks; nothing I’m sure could have given her greater pleasure! I can only hope that both you and Amelia will adjust to this loss with a minimum of pain—though that is really asking for the moon. . . . My thoughts are with you—and sympathy —and concern.
My students had been waiting patiently for me to return to normal teaching mode. I felt grateful to them for recognizing that Eve’s death had been a great personal loss for me. Almost everyone had met Eve and enjoyed her company. They were sympathetic when tears suddenly overtook me during an especially beautiful musical passage.
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