Two-Part Inventions (20 page)

Tanya's mother was a writer. Or called herself a writer. She'd published a novel twenty years ago and nothing since but a few stories in obscure magazines. She worked as a paralegal in a law firm and wrote for two hours every night, Tanya said. She did it for the pleasure of writing itself. She believed in it like a religion, like someone going to Mass every morning.

“But does she still try to publish?” asked Jason Shaw, a skinny violinist who already, as a freshman, had been selected for one of the school's two orchestras.

“I'm not sure. She doesn't talk about it, though she does still have an agent she's in touch with. But publication isn't the whole point. That's what she says, anyway. You don't work for fame. You work for the process itself, for the product.”

“Ugh, don't call it a product,” said Elena. “That makes it sound like canned soup or toasters. It's art.”

Art. The two times Suzanne had used that word at home, her father had snorted and even her brothers, visiting for Sunday dinner, smirked. They wanted her to be a musician, but they didn't like the changes her training would bring. She must remain the agreeable girl who never did anything questionable or “out of line”—her father's expression. And avoid pretentious words like “art.”

“That may be okay for a writer,” said Peter Jackson, a native New Yorker who was studying the clarinet. “My father's an actor. He's been in commercials and a lot of off-Broadway shows. But he can't make a living acting. He has a day job in the gift shop at the Met. I feel sorry for him, always going to auditions, always waiting for the callback. You can't act alone in a room, the way you can play music or write. There's not even any tree to fall in the forest with an actor. You need the stage
and the audience in order to do your thing. As a matter of fact, you can't do too much alone with a clarinet, either—there's not much solo stuff. But at least I can get work in an orchestra.”

“For pianists, too,” said Elena, “it's either solo performing or accompanying or teaching.”

“That's not so,” said Simon. “There are chamber groups. Look at the Beaux Arts trio, or the Istomin-Stern-Rose Trio. Those are terrific pianists. I wouldn't complain if I could be in a group like that.”

Some nights, in a coffee shop near school, Suzanne and Elena and a few of the other pianists—Rose, Tanya, Simon—would play a game where they each made up reviews of their debut recitals, striving to outdo each other in extravagant, fulsome praise. Their creations inevitably ended up in parody and raucous laughter. “Maybe we should try the worst possible reviews for a change,” Elena suggested, but Suzanne was against that. “You never know—they might come true.”

In her fourth month at school, a notice posted all through the corridors announced that the great pianist Anthony Dawson was coming to give a master class. The class would be a major event, held in the largest auditorium and publicized in local papers; the public was invited to attend. Rumors flew, speculating on which fourth-year students would be selected to play for him.

Dawson's visit was scheduled for two o'clock on a bright November day. By one thirty the piano students had already found seats toward the front, and the rest of the student body—instrumentalists, singers, dancers—was not far behind them. The first few rows were reserved for faculty and for the three students who would be playing. They sat stiff and silent as
if frozen; Suzanne, with her usual jumble of emotions, envied them and pitied them, and was glad she wasn't one of them. She looked around: The auditorium was filled, and about a third of the crowd weren't students—amateur musicians, most likely, or local music lovers come to see and hear the great Anthony Dawson.

Just as the audience was growing restless, Dawson entered at the back, escorted by Mme. Kabalevsky and Mr. Hofmann. Heads turned; the teachers rose to greet him. “Did you ever meet him?” Suzanne whispered to Elena, beside her.

“No,” she replied, “and even if I had, I'd never walk over with all the faculty surrounding him. That would be very bad form.”

Finally the greetings were over and the teachers settled into the front row seats. The first to play was Amit Mukherjee, who had come all the way from Calcutta and was among the school stars; everyone predicted a brilliant career for him. He played Beethoven's Piano Sonata no. 26,
Les Adieux
, one of the most difficult. After the first movement he paused and glanced at Dawson, who waved him to continue. Amit had the mannerisms of famous pianists Suzanne had seen: a swaying of the shoulders, a shaking of the head, too artificial, overconfident.

Dawson let him play to the end of the piece. This might bode well or ill. Suzanne thought his playing lacked the poignancy and delicacy the music required, and she waited curiously to see what Anthony Dawson would say. Amit finished with a flourish and turned to face the audience with a look of satisfaction. But in a few moments, he seemed to shrink in his elegant clothes.

“We can see that technically you're quite the wizard,” Dawson began.

“Uh-oh,” Elena murmured.

This was not a good sign. Dawson went on to praise Amit's facility and mastery of the notes, the pedaling, the phrasing. “But your presentation was a little hard, don't you think? By hard, I mean heavy. Brusque. Crisp.”

“He's one of the tough ones,” whispered Elena. “I went to a few of his master classes while we were still in high school—sometimes I cut class to go. He may be right, but he's harsh. I'm glad it's not me sitting up there.”

Finally Dawson sat down and played a section of the opening. As he began, the audience stirred, as if gathering its attention, and indeed the music was transformed, with nuances and a tenderness that had been submerged before.

He asked Amit to repeat the second half of the final movement. While Dawson played Amit had stood to one side, holding himself very straight, and now, as he took the seat again, he nodded and smiled at the famous pianist. He had collected himself; this, too, was part of his performance. To Suzanne's surprise, he played with far greater delicacy and warmth of expression: In ten minutes, in exchange for his pride, he had learned how to give life to the sonata. Not a bad exchange, she thought. It wasn't that Anthony Dawson was unkind. Rather, he was intimidatingly cordial, dauntingly thorough.

The next student, Pete O'Brien, was a boy from Queens who had already won a minor contest and given a few local recitals. He did not have Amit's irritating mannerisms, but rather approached the piano like a gladiator seeking to conquer it. He played Brahms's B-minor Rhapsody. Whether it was nerves or
whether he was not as wonderful as reputed, his playing was noticeably forced. Effortful. Suzanne could feel his effort in her fingers, it was so tactile.

He was lowering his head to begin a new passage, when Dawson spoke from his seat in the front row. “Just one moment,” and he stepped up to the stage, holding the score. “Well, that was fine,” he said kindly. “That was well done. You've worked hard, obviously. Just a few things to point out.” And there followed ten minutes of close, unsparing criticism. “You must give the notes their full value,” he said. “Just because they're played presto doesn't mean you can slide over them.” Then he talked about the various forms of staccato: Secco staccato, he explained, was not the same as staccato. And then about shading and nuances, playing a couple of bars here and there to illustrate. And on it went, while Pete, in a dark suit and tie for the occasion, seemed to shrink exactly as Amit had done. Anthony Dawson played a section from the opening, and again all the shades in the music became brighter.

There was a short break after Pete finished, so short that the audience was advised not to leave their seats—just long enough for Dawson to “catch his breath,” as Professor Hofmann said. While Elena chatted with the person on her right, Suzanne spent the few minutes wondering how she could possibly withstand such public criticism. Under Mme. Kabalevsky she had gained courage and learned self-control. She could tolerate the biweekly critiques held for the students fairly well; the listeners were her teachers, her classmates, her peers. She knew she was one of the outstanding pianists and that others knew it, too; in this tight milieu, reputations were quick to develop. But nothing could thicken her skin; every critical word still seeped into
her pores. Elena was just the opposite. Suzanne had seen it in class. She took in the comments, nodded, and forged ahead. She never appeared wounded—she had an impervious surface. Elena had no trouble distinguishing between her performance and herself.

If she were to play for a pianist like Dawson in two years, if she were ever to play for an audience at all, she must find a way to get over her fear. Her friends all bemoaned their anxiety, but Suzanne's terror, she knew, was different. It would not permit the life she had dreamed of since childhood. Watching the master class, she couldn't deny that any longer.

The last to play was Laura Duvenek, also a star student with great expectations. She was a narrow reed of a girl, unprepossessing in looks, with stringy blond hair, and unlike the boy students, she hadn't bothered to dress for the occasion but wore a drab everyday shirt and skirt with shoes that were down at the heel. She'd have to get someone to fix her up before she appeared on a New York stage, Suzanne thought. But it was evident from the start of Haydn's Sonata in E Flat Major, one of the simpler ones, that she was the most accomplished of the three. Dawson stopped her only once, in the first movement, the allegro. He suddenly leaped from his seat and onto the stage. “No, wait, stop right there. You're losing the shading, the nuance. It's those triplets. They're much too slow.” He was excited; he practically shoved her from the bench and played the passage with the triplets, and at his quicker pace they were entirely new, brilliant, rousing. He got up and waved her to the chair.

“Now you. Do what I did.”

Laura did not seem disconcerted in the least, or troubled
by the several hundred people focused on her. She played the passage again, and the triplets at the rapid speed took on the luster that had been missing. She stopped and looked up at him, without the slightest hesitation. “Like that?” she asked.

“Yes. Precisely like that,” he said, smiling, and returned to his seat. She played the rest of the sonata uninterrupted, and Anthony Dawson returned to the stage and praised her as he had not praised the others. The audience applauded, but Laura seemed indifferent to anything but Dawson's words. If only I could be like that, Suzanne thought. But not look like that, she added quickly, in case any nameless gods of music students could hear her prayer.

 

 

What with the headiness of Juilliard, her new friends and teachers, that old affair with Philip shrank to almost nothing. A childhood incident. She had a couple of brief flings with fellow students—Simon, for one—but they all knew it wasn't serious; it was recreation, a relief from the weight of their studies, and less intense than the studies. She barely thought of Philip at all; the grief he had caused her dissipated. She and Elena never mentioned his name. He was not even history, for history is remembered and recorded. He was obliterated.

After a year of commuting up to Morningside Heights an hour twice a day on the subway—such a waste of precious time—Suzanne persuaded her parents to let her live close to school. She found a room for rent in an airy apartment facing the Hudson River, belonging to the widow of a Juilliard professor. Mrs. Campbell was mild and unobtrusive and spent most of her time painting watercolors of Riverside Park scenes
and volunteering in the local church's preschool program. She liked having a music student in the apartment and charged a low rent, which she made even lower when Suzanne agreed to take on some errands and household tasks. Best of all, she had a grand piano in the living room and said Suzanne could use it whenever she wished, so she didn't have to worry about signing up for practice rooms—there were never enough. Suzanne was content with her simple room—narrow bed, desk, bookcase, and chair—and she hung bright Dufy prints on the walls. She was even more content with school, despite its occasional terrors. Her turn in the master classes with visiting pianists had not yet come, but it would; there was no evading it. Still, she would remember those years at school and in Mrs. Campbell's apartment as the happiest of her life: There was work she loved and did well, and despite her fears, extravagant hope.

“I'm as good as most of them,” she told Richard breathlessly on the phone. She had so much to do, was always in a rush. “I'm probably one of the best. There are a couple of guys who are really good, and also this one girl, this Russian, the one I met back in high school. She's the one who took my boyfriend, I told you about that. But now we're close friends. She might be slightly better than me. But a tiny bit on the splashy side.”