The Virtuoso Page 4

  ‘It’s your birthday too,’ I said, cursing myself that I couldn’t think of anything better to say.

  ‘And I’d like you to choose,’ he replied, continuing to play, and nodding his forehead towards the stacks of music on the sideboards of the piano.

  I stood and started thumbing through the pile: Mendelssohn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mahler, Weber, Poulenc, Debussy, trying to concentrate on reading the covers while glancing back at him, afraid he might vanish.

  He was still smiling, looking straight ahead, then down at his hands. ‘Have you found something?’ he asked. ‘We’ll be another year older, shortly.’

  I pulled out the first duet that I came across. ‘How about the Moszkowski dances?’ I asked, putting the music up in front of him.

  ‘Splendid,’ he replied. Then he stopped playing, turned straight towards me, grinning, his eyes enveloping me. Blood filled my face and I quickly turned away, and concentrated on settling comfortably on the seat.

  ‘Well, off we go then, shall we?’

  I nodded, hardly able to speak, and lifted my quivering hands to the keys.

  As soon as we began, I relaxed. There was something about the way he played that put me completely at ease. I enjoyed playing duets immensely; it was like dancing a waltz—allowing you to be swept up into someone else’s tempo, and they, likewise, to be carried along in yours. It was extraordinarily intimate, and no duet partner could ever be like another. Sometimes when I played duets, I felt that I was locked in a battle of wills, a fierce game of cat and mouse. (There was a girl at the Academy, Eileen Saunders, who always insisted upon playing primo, and whenever I played with her, by the end of the work, I’d be all thumbs, feeling frantic and undone, as if I’d only just escaped with my life.) Playing with Noël was quite the opposite: he had a manner that buoyed me up and took charge in a most tender fashion. I felt more accomplished than I actually was, as if no music was beyond me. I’m not sure what prompted this feeling. Perhaps it was because Noël was so acutely aware of everything I was doing, more aware than I was myself. He’d ritardando ever so slightly when I was approaching a challenging part, or push me along, like a driver whipping a horse, when he knew both the music and I had it in us to charge. Even though he played primo, I never felt that he was the leader, that I had to blindly follow him whatever he did. With Noël next to me, I could play better than I ever could have done on my own or with anyone else.

  ‘You play secondo just right, you know,’ he said.

  ‘Nice and quiet, not thumping away!’

  I laughed to myself, that he had misinterpreted my timidness so positively.

  At the end of the piece we bounced off the last chords and I sat glowing beside him; I couldn’t wait to play another. Then he turned to me, his smile dropped and he spoke gravely.

  ‘Well, you can’t stay sitting there, you know.’ He stood and stepped backwards, away from the stool.

  I blushed, started to stand and edge out of the seat, mumbling a thankyou.

  ‘I just farted! I’m terribly sorry!’ he said and burst into laughter, waving his hand in front of his face, bowing over in hysterics. ‘But if you don’t mind, then let’s play some Schubert.’ And chuckling to himself he stood and started shuffling through the music pile. ‘Righto—this ought to clear the air.’

  He sat down again, placed the D major Rondo duet in front of me and flashed a devouring grin.

  Notre amitié est invariable— the publisher’s subtitle winked at me cheekily from the page.

  I’d seen this duet played before and was aware of the intimacy required between the two players, that it was virtually impossible to play without all four hands ending up in knots. I tried not to read too much into his choice; maybe I was being presumptuous. I sat quietly, obediently, like a student in a lesson. We wriggled closer together, a warm seam now running along the length of my body. I could feel my heart beating in my throat. Looking straight ahead at the music, I breathed in, swallowed and waited, avoiding his gaze, which I could feel branding the side of my face.

  I’ve often wondered of whom Schubert was thinking when he composed this flirtatious piece. I imagined the young romantic (the ‘divine spark’ of whom Beethoven spoke from his deathbed), in the winter of 1818, sitting alone in his room in the schoolhouse where he worked, in the Rossau, just outside Vienna, fantasising about a beautiful pianist, his heart at a gallop, while scratching away with his quill on his manuscript sheets. He was twenty at the time, and although his life of poverty, illness and melancholia was carried away by a lethal bout of typhoid only ten years later, when he composed the Rondo in D his voice was filled with the idealistic poetry of youth. The theme—or main subject—of the Rondo, which keeps returning, taunting, teasing around a string of other episodes, is a lively and elegant dance.

  Noël was looking at me with goading eyes, his face inches from mine. ‘Are you ready?’

  I gathered every trembling impulse, nodded and brought my hands to the keys.

  We began.

  Whenever I’d heard this duet in the past, I’d always thought of a couple dancing a mazurka, holding their torsos erect, their heads high and aloof. Playing the secondo, a strong dotted rhythm, I was the stomp and click of the heels as we strutted about on the floor, only braving the scantest of glances as we passed each other under the chandeliers. Noël was smiling to himself as he played the primo, the majestic twirl and curtsey that pranced about me. Then it was my turn to sing out the melody, with Noël’s notes echoing my call. My earlier nerves had completely subsided and I seemed to be doing no more than simply humming the tune.

  Noël turned the page and we moved into the first episode—a fiery exchange in E minor. I stormed up the keys, fortissimo, then his chords jumped down towards me, and skipped lightly away. We rallied back and forth, calling out and demanding answers from each other as we both toyed and cavorted about. Despite our passionate displays, I was most relieved when we returned, in the middle of the next page, to the safety of our dignified yet provocative dance—our courteous sidestep, executed with the subtlest wink.

  Each time my part rose and his tune dipped lower, we’d almost meet. I’d climb up to a B and trickle straight down, and moments later he’d descend to the A; then again, soon after, I’d rise to the E and he’d skip down to the F sharp, then leap off and away. We were like two admirers gliding past each other on the floor, a seemingly inevitable embrace hindered each time we drew near by the beguiling swirl of the music that intervened, thrusting one of us off to the farthest reaches of the room.

  And every time it occurred I felt, maybe imagined, that we lingered a little longer, to see what would happen if by chance we were to meet. I’d watch his fingers race down the keys as if pursuing mine, and see how long I could remain without appearing too yielding. Then I’d follow him likewise, praying that he might wait for me, but then as I approached, he’d be off, leaving me in a trail of whispering eddies, trilling from his hands onto mine.

  The last episode of the piece was a peal of wedding bells, a rippling legato in G major. And even though Noël was contentedly smiling throughout, and swaying his head giddily to these celebratory triads, I was suddenly struck by the inevitability of departure, that I was a plaything and this duet was a meaningless dalliance. Resisting any more hopeful glances in his direction, any more quiet begging for his gaze, I concentrated on the notes I was playing so that my desire to throw my arms about him could be reined in to producing a diminutive final chord, a swift mounting to my feet, a gentlemanly thankyou and a gracious farewell.

  We were now heading towards the final return of the theme—our very last dance—and I was relieved this would all soon be over. My part was quietly undulating beneath his melody, which softened and slowed into a string of questions and then pleas. Our parts converged for the final A major chord of the episode (my right-hand third finger on C sharp and his left-hand third finger playing the A just above), and that’s when it happened: our little fingers touched each other, no
t at all awkwardly, but ever so lightly, like a gentle grazing of lips.

  I dared not move—I ought to have only played a crotchet and then a rest, but I waited for his next notes to lead into mine. I was completely at his mercy—I would have been frozen to the keys forever if those following notes of his never came.

  Then he turned his head slightly towards me. ‘What are you doing this Friday night?’ he whispered.

  ‘Nothing,’ I replied, handing myself over to him entirely.

  ‘I’ve two tickets for Tosca—would you like to come?’

  ‘That would be wonderful.’

  ‘Marvellous. I’ll meet you at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre at six.’ And then, as if nothing had happened at all, a graceful mordent around a note, he arpeggiated the A seventh chord in both hands, so that it chimed out radiantly, then trumpeted out the final proclamation of the theme.

  We rollicked along, bellowing out triumphant chords, our little fingers now happily brushing whenever we ventured close. Then four lines from the end my right hand jumped over his left, so that our elbows were tucked in the other’s side. We sang out the theme, back and forth—dolce—echoing the other, then with our arms still threaded, my forearm leaning gently on his, we launched into the final chords—fortissimo staccato—bouncing between A and D major; I could feel the shudder of his upper arm trembling through my ribs. Then the closing affirmations—D-D-D-D! And as we were belting out these chords I was humming them to myself, and it seemed that the sound of him and me and the quiver running through my veins were all ringing as one.

  Thinking about that evening at Walter’s house, remembering my inebriated laughter as I collected my hat and coat from Walter’s wife, Delphine, and leapt down the bluestone steps onto the sleety footpath, I’m aware that my real interest in the Schumanns was born on that night.

  I recall a moment in particular as I skipped towards the station and looked up at the spire of the parish church of St Peter’s, the blue and gold clock-face striking eleven, bells chiming through the elms. In the pale cyan moonlight everything around me had a clarity that I’d never noticed before; I could see the outline of every leaf on every tree in the square as if it had been etched with ink, and each blade, needle or frond dazzled an entire spectrum of greens. The urgent call of a tawny owl, sharp and woody as a flute, shot across the treetops, piercing the rustling breath of the wind through the leaves. And coinciding with this new awareness of everything I saw, felt and heard around me, I thought of Clara Wieck.

  Clara was only ten years old when Robert Schumann moved in with her family to take lessons from her father, the renowned but autocratic teacher Friedrich Wieck. Schumann was determined to become the greatest pianist alive. Clara, however, became her father’s top student, and as a teenager she spent years touring around the continent with him, becoming Europe’s most celebrated young pianist.

  Schumann eventually gave up his dream of becoming a performer and shifted his energies to composition. He moved out from the Wiecks’, but returned to visit often, especially to see Clara, with whom he’d fallen madly in love.

  When Clara was sixteen Schumann asked Wieck for his daughter’s hand in marriage; Wieck, livid at the prospect of his daughter throwing away her future by marrying a struggling composer, ordered Schumann out of the house, telling him never to contact his daughter again. Months later Schumann wrote what he called a ‘deep lament’ for Clara, a piece called ‘Ruins’. A composition that was later to become the first movement of the Fantasie opus 17, dedicated to his friend, the composer-pianist Franz Liszt.

  I imagined Clara during this time, locked away at the piano by her father for days and weeks on end. He took her touring from country to country, month after month, filling concert halls wherever she went. In the midst of this schedule of rehearsals, performances and travel, she would receive a message from Schumann, hand-delivered behind her father’s back by a confidante—page after page of music: Fantasie, Davidsbündlertänze, Kinderszenen, Kreisleriana, Fantasiestücke, Humoreske, Novelleten…

  Clara finally replied to Schumann, echoing his feelings, and the two became secretly engaged. She continued touring with her father for several more years but then, against his wishes, married Schumann in the winter of 1839, eleven years after their first meeting.

  When I think of this story there is one instance I keep returning to over and over, one moment when Clara’s life changed forever. August 1837: Clara is at home in Leipzig and receives, via a friend, another manuscript that Schumann has composed for her: the Fantasie opus 17. Clara’s father is out sending telegrams arranging her forthcoming tour of Austria, and Clara is supposed to be doing her morning practice. She sits at the piano and places Schumann’s music in front of her—To Clara— scribbled in a hand she knows so well. There are blobs of ink splattered over the page. She takes a closer look: the stems of the notes are frantic scratches; the arpeggios in the left hand are huge clusters written in a single flurry; the phrase lines sweep euphorically above. At first she doesn’t even play a note, just glances over the script, the tumble of notes that rise and fall and glide along the page carving out brilliant patterns, a solo melody singing pleadingly over the top. Then she lifts her hands to the piano and begins, her fingers close to the keys, playing the chords from the wrist, just as her father has always taught her. As her fingers move around the notes the music is unlike anything she has ever heard before. The rolling semi-quavers in the left hand, the fortissimo falling five-note phrase in the right. And from that moment she knows both her love and her fate are sealed.

  I remember little of the performance at Sadler’s Wells that Friday evening. I sat there rubbing the smooth skin of the mother-of-pearl cufflinks under my thumb (wearing them proudly as if they were a gift from Noël), watching him out of the corner of my eye, admiring his still profile, his attentive gaze, bothered that he was never tempted to glance back at me. I looked down at my father’s old suit, running my fingers along the sharp crease of the leg. I wondered if Noël had noticed its narrow tailoring and soft Italian weave, so similar to the one I’d seen him wearing at the National Gallery earlier in the year.

  I had been raised on Tosca—my father’s favourite of Puccini’s operas. We’d often sit around the gramophone in the evenings: my father leaning back in his armchair, his legs stretched out in front of the fire; and in the other armchair, my aunt staring down at her knitting, a perpetual dull clicking under the soaring cries of Floria Tosca. My father played me all the operas of Strauss, Verdi, Wagner and Rossini, yet I always thought Tosca’s aria—‘Vissi d’Arte’—that she sings before her lover, Caravadossi, is sent to face the firing squad, the saddest human sound I’d ever heard.

  But that night at Sadler’s Wells with Noël I sat fidgeting in my seat, unable to engage with this opera that now seemed to mock my infatuation with its rising melodrama, and thinking that if I forgot about Noël for one moment I might lose him. From the opening three ominous chords of Scarpia’s leitmotiv I remained conscious of every moment that passed, stayed in tune with every sigh Noël issued, each smile and nod, and eagerly waited for Tosca to hurl herself to her death.

  At the first interval Noël went to the bar while I waited in the foyer amongst the blushing ladies, furiously fanning themselves to douse les sentiments d’amour aroused by Tosca’s doomed passion.

  Noël stood a head above many in the crowd. I could see him sharing a joke with the barman and then turning to scan the room, his eyes flitting over the hats and hairnets. It was such a marvellous sight I was almost disappointed when his gaze met mine. As he walked towards me, men and women glanced and whispered—they clearly all knew who he was—and gently parted before him as if he were royalty. He seemed unaware, holding the champagne flutes high, grinning as if he was half expecting to spill one on a mink stole or down someone’s back.

  ‘So you’re at the Academy—are you with Professor Brainstorm?’ he asked, taking a sip.

  Noël had studied at the Academy years earlier, and
I could only assume he was referring to his old teacher Harold Craxton, considered by many as the Academy’s top teacher, but almost equally famous for his extraordinary absentmindedness.

  ‘No, Anton Steiner.’ I couldn’t match his playful tone.

  ‘Oh, that’s right—so you are. Have you met his wife? Excellent pianist, but makes this dreadful noise when she plays, as though she’s got a bombinating bee trapped in her mouth.’

  ‘I might have met her once.’ I smiled and shrugged, not entirely comfortable with Noël’s ridiculing of Edith Steiner, a dear old lady who always pulled me aside whenever we met to tell me how highly her husband regarded my playing.

  ‘I once heard her accompany a violinist playing a Brahms sonata. The buzzing was so loud I could hardly contain myself. And poor Eleanor, the American lass sitting next to me, she was in such a state she almost swallowed her hanky!’

  I kept smiling throughout, despite my embarrassment for poor Edith.

  ‘Lovely chap, Steiner. “Funf”, we used to call him. You remember Funf? The German spy?’

  ‘Can I do you now, sir?’ I asked in my best Mrs Mopp, the charwoman’s voice, despite thinking little of the wartime comedy programme to which Noël referred, always having preferred the classical music shows.