To Play Again

by Carol Rosenberger

  Nevertheless, since I couldn’t truly accept what he was saying, I soon began to shift his assessment into a positive direction. After all, I still felt changes almost daily that surely indicated progress. By the time I wrote the news to Webster, I had progressed faster than anticipated:

  Lassen believes that they have done all they can for me, so I will be leaving shortly!

  Every so often I feel as if one of my many heavy chains is dropping away. I start feeling a little more emancipated, and cannot keep my imagination from leaping ahead. . . . I can almost sense, at times, what it would be like to be able to play the piano again—indescribable! I had completely lost that sense, and now that I can imagine it once again, even just a little bit, I am almost too anxious and excited to sleep.

  Webster responded with considerable enthusiasm:

  We have both followed the process with keen interest, but this news is really more than we dared hope for; I thought we might have to wait months and even then have to make do with less than has already been accomplished. So I think we are every bit as excited about it as you are! How well I can understand your sense of urgency to get back to keyboard problems! Whatever I can do to help is yours to command.

  Martha and David welcomed me “home” to the Köllnerhof, and it felt good to be back in Vienna with them both. I soon adjusted to working and experimenting on my own rather than having almost every movement guided by the physical therapists. I didn’t resume Baroque studies or the Schenker study with Eibner, as I wanted to spend every possible bit of physical and emotional energy continuing the search for neuromuscular connections at the keyboard. And, at all times, I was nervously conscious of Lassen’s “one year” deadline.

  I found that I could rent an hour’s worth of time every so often with a beautiful Bösendorfer grand piano at the company’s piano showroom just a few blocks from the Köllnerhof. Since it occupied a practice room of its own, I felt comfortable that no one could hear me. Instinctively I hoped that the beautiful, singing sound of this instrument would inspire me to think positively about whatever bits of music I was working on—and that, I hoped, might encourage more neuromuscular breakthroughs.

  Martha and David were both excited at the prospect of Webster’s visit in early February and made sure that the guest room was as ready as possible. Webster had spent a substantial amount of time in Vienna during his own student days, so we were sure that he knew what to expect in the way of living conditions.

  The day he arrived felt like high drama. Here on our doorstep, to spend some time with me, was the man I had been hopelessly in love with for some eight years.

  “God, you’ve been through a lot,” he said, after one penetrating look—before a hug or even a hello. That first look made it clear that he saw shocking changes. As he was to tell journalist Evan Wylie several years later, once upon a time he had considered me “one of the genuine new talents” of my generation. Now he saw a person who was much thinner, more fragile, “but the real differences were other than physical. Where she had been self-possessed and confident, she was now uncertain. Where she had been exuberant and outgoing, she was now withdrawn. In place of the dynamic energy that used to overwhelm us all, there was now a nervous preoccupation. I saw an entire change of personality. She was shattered.”

  He greeted Martha and David warmly and was soon talking with all of us about having a gemütlich time together. He said he was looking forward to experiencing Vienna again, but I knew that his main goal was to create a pleasurable backdrop for what would be a painful joint effort at the keyboard.

  Webster and I went on some lovely walks, and the four of us drove to a few spots that he didn’t want us to miss. One high point was a quick trip to Venice that Webster and I took together in the Blue Bug. He wanted to pay a visit to Arnold Schoenberg’s daughter, Nuria Schoenberg Nono, whom he had known from Los Angeles, and to meet her husband, Luigi Nono. In Webster’s opinion, Nono was one of the more interesting contemporary composers. For me, it was a dreamlike experience, traveling with my hero to Venice, meeting his friends and even taking a canal trip in a gondola.

  Back at the Köllnerhof, we set up a routine to tackle the real reason for Webster’s visit. In some ways, his presence made the awareness of my condition more painful. Here was Webster, who had once insisted on perfection, sitting with me at the keyboard, racking his brain as to how best to help me. He was trying to help me find some way—any way—to use what I had left in my hands. And some of the problems I had experienced by myself were more acute when I was trying to “play” for someone else, especially for someone of his expertise.

  A phenomenon occurred more frequently with Webster by my side—probably because I was trying that much harder with even one person as an audience. When a message from my brain wouldn’t get through to my fingers, I would be seized by what I had come to call a “nerve shudder.” It was as if something had gone haywire inside me, and I would begin to sob. Even without a “nerve shudder,” we considered it a good day if the necessarily short session ended before frustration and fatigue overwhelmed me and I would burst into tears.

  When I was not at the keyboard, however, I was less agitated, and therefore emotionally better off, than when I had first gone to Copenhagen several months before. The constant anxious thoughts rushing through my head ever since the hospital in Paris would turn off for a while. Sometimes I experienced an absence of thought that felt almost comfortable.

  But one day, after Webster had been there for a couple of weeks, he confronted me: “Carol, you haven’t finished a sentence since I’ve been here!” he said, almost in exasperation. That was bewildering and, I first thought, unfair. But when I queried Martha and David, they backed him up. As the four of us discussed the matter, it was clear that Martha and David were so used to my silence that they didn’t notice it anymore.

  Evidently I had taken refuge in the blankness whenever possible, and even though it felt like a relief to me, the “normal” world did not see it that way. Webster wanted me to talk about serious things, and I went blank when I tried, at least with him.

  One evening he invited me out to dinner and the opera—a special occasion that he had probably designed to put us both into a relaxed mood. Sitting at a table in the Sacher restaurant, across from the Staatsoper, we had some wine with our schnitzel and basked in the warm atmosphere. Still, Webster was obliged, as usual, to do most of the talking. When the waiter brought our coffee, my brain must have registered that the opera was about to begin. Perhaps because I knew that I wouldn’t have to continue for very long, I finally started to talk.

  And once I had started, a lot came tumbling out. Webster never looked at his watch, though he must have known that we were missing the opera. He let me lose all track of time. At last I was talking to him about the pain of the past three-plus years and about the discouraging picture Lassen had given me toward the end of my Copenhagen treatment. At one point, I finally gave voice to the feeling that had been forming during the last part of my work in Copenhagen: that I was probably no longer worth any special time and effort on Webster’s part.

  “What is really important, Carol,” he responded, “is that you reestablish some kind of belief in yourself.” I didn’t know how to answer. “That is the reason I’m here,” he added. He said that he agreed with Lassen’s limit of one year. “Above all,” he continued, “I want you to be a happy person!”

  Maybe because of the wine or because it was finally the time, I spoke the truth that shocked even me the way it came out: “But I don’t want to be a happy person! I want to be a pianist!”

  There was stunned silence on both sides. After a long pause, Webster leaned forward and locked eyes with me. “I don’t want you to end up with just one dried-up flower,” he said slowly, weighting every word with emphasis, trying to counteract the shocking thought I had just expressed. I was to replay this exchange countless times in the months and years to come, especially when grim thoughts crossed my mind.

  Fo
rtunately, Lassen arrived in Vienna after my conversation with Webster had taken place. We had set March 23rd as our approximate meeting time, and Lassen mentioned that he would fly in the day before. Webster and I met him at the airport, took him to his hotel, and had a get-acquainted talk over dinner.

  The following day, Lassen came to the Köllnerhof. There, we got serious, as I did numerous demonstrations for him at the piano, and Webster showed him in detail the kinds of motions and movements that were beyond my capability at that point. Lassen asked questions, and explained to us what he saw in our demonstrations.

  The conference was exhausting for me but evidently enlightening for both Webster and Lassen. Afterward, we went out for dinner, some wine, and warm-hearted conversation with toasts to Lassen’s team, to Webster’s expert participation, and to my recovery. Webster and Lassen agreed that another year would be a fair and reasonable time in which to draw further conclusions about my prospects. I still found it frightening that they agreed on the one-year deadline, but accepted it for the time being.

  All three of us thought it was time for me to go home to the United States, so that Webster and I could continue working together more easily. In fact, Webster was already talking about a six-month stay in Santa Fe, where he and Lilian had their summer home. I could have a little guest house for sleeping and practicing, and Webster and I could spend some time in his studio every day, at an unhurried pace.

  I was sad that Martha and David would be so far away, but there was no question as to what I should do. Webster’s offer of continuing help might be my only hope. I would have some time in Michigan with my family and then head for New Mexico. Webster left soon after our conference, and I stayed a little longer, working in a few last visits to the Staatsoper, a couple of summary sessions with Eibner, and a last Baroque seminar.

  Shortly before I was to leave, Luigi Nono—“Gigi” to his friends—came to Vienna for a conference of contemporary composers who favored twelve-tone style. When Webster and I were in Venice, I had told Gigi that he could stay at the Köllnerhof with us. I was excited to meet his friends and fellow composers, including Pierre Boulez and Bruno Maderna, during a couple of café breaks and a dinner, but soon realized that they were seeing me as Gigi’s “squeeze.”

  This was upsetting for two reasons. Gigi was married to a wonderful person, and though he seemed to be drawn to me, I would never have entertained anything beyond friendship with him. Clearly, his friends couldn’t see any other reason for him to hang out with me, as I was a nobody. As it happened, I had been looking at the score of Pierre Boulez’s First Sonata for some months, fantasizing about playing it someday, and was eager to ask Pierre a couple of questions about it. But the discussion was short-lived, for whatever reason, and it was all too easy for me to retreat from further conversation.

  If I had been on more solid ground personally, the episode with the composers’ group would never have bothered me. But since everything about my life was up in the air at that point, it felt like proof that my contemporaries had no reason to accept me. It reinforced the feeling that I was, after all, “going home in defeat.”

  Chapter Ten

  Webster, Santa Fe, and the Move West

  After a couple of catch-up weeks with my parents in Michigan, I got in touch with Webster about his Santa Fe plan. He and Lilian were indeed inviting me to spend the entire summer there so that we could make as much “piano rehab” progress as possible. We didn’t know it then, but that rehab program would stretch through two long summers in 1959 and 1960. It was a remarkable commitment for anyone to make, but the Aitkens presented the plan as a foregone conclusion, and so I accepted it without question.

  Webster and Lilian, at that time in their mid-fifties, were both career-minded professionals. Lilian’s “children” were the countless young tuberculosis patients she had helped in her work at Bellevue Hospital. Webster, a concert pianist admired in music capitals such as New York and London for his sophisticated solo programs, taught piano only on an advanced level. He was used to working with pianists who already had well-developed technique, and mainly needed guidance in refining the expressive content of their playing. For example, his main approach to me at Carnegie Mellon had been, “Whoa! You can do something more subtle in this phrase.” And yet here he was, someone not naturally inclined to give encouragement or praise, taking on a completely different role from any he had assumed before. And here was Lilian, who had met me only a few times prior to that summer, accepting me into their household, where I would be spending the better part of each day.

  The little studio-guest house near the Aitkens’ home seemed perfectly comfortable, and a rented piano arrived shortly after I did. Their house on Camino de la Luz, which would be our mutual home base during the next two long summers, looked out toward the mountains from their living-room picture window and up the hillside from their patio. This was my introduction to the Southwest, to life at seven thousand feet above sea level, to the beauties of the high desert and its vistas. My memories of what followed—the painful work, the closeness with these two remarkable friends—are intertwined with that rarefied atmosphere.

  Webster knew all too well—from working with me in Vienna—that our predictably distressing sessions together at the piano should be short. So he had designed a daily plan with the best potential for progress. We were to get together twice every day for a brief session in his studio: one in late morning, after he had finished his own work at the piano, and another later in the afternoon. Before the morning session, while he was practicing, Lilian and I had an open invitation to go for a swim in a neighbor’s pool. That ensured that I could do my Copenhagen water exercises regularly.

  Webster’s studio was located on a second level, built into the hillside, affording us the privacy to work without sound leaking into the main part of the house. The studio was a good-sized room with lots of finished wood that allowed a lovely resonance for Webster’s Steinway grand. The room was sparsely furnished, in Webster style, with a few chairs and an ornate, soft-voiced Baroque clavichord in addition to the grand. The studio’s generous windows framed a beautiful hillside view. I drew on that view before and after our difficult sessions and many times between the frustrating moments in our work.

  Since Webster anticipated that many of our piano sessions would end abruptly with one of my emotional upsets, he and Lilian had planned for the late-morning sessions to segue into a leisurely lunch.

  In Lilian’s many years as a pediatrician, she had developed simple techniques for distracting young patients from discomfort or pain. Each day, when Webster and I came down the stairs from our morning session, she would look out the picture window and exclaim, for instance, “Oh, look over there! You can just see . . .” or “Look! I wonder what that is! Can you tell?” These distractions, or redirections, worked every time and made me chuckle at their transparency even as I was being coaxed back from despair over what had just happened in the studio.

  After lunch, with the Aitkens carrying most of the conversation, we would all take an afternoon siesta—a local custom—for which I would return to my little guest house. Following our siesta time, I would reappear at the main house for afternoon tea, the prelude to a second run at pianistic problem solving.

  The siesta break involved more than simply local custom. Lilian knew that my damaged spinal and upper body muscles needed horizontal positioning in the course of each day, to cut down on overworking the muscles. The Aitkens also encouraged me to stretch out, or get into “the horizontal,” as they called it, at any time that I felt the need.

  After our late afternoon session, Lilian would prepare her “prescription” for muscle relaxation and low-stress conversation: a generous Jack Daniels and soda, presented with a warm smile. The three of us would talk about a broad range of topics as we sat around the patio fireplace, eventually moving inside for dinner. Webster and Lilian both read widely and had interesting world experiences, so I found their general conversation fascinating. I
began to view Webster’s piercing bon mots—which some of his Carnegie students had come to dread—in a new light, once I saw how they amused Lilian and inspired her humorous retorts. Those were memorable evenings, warmed by the glow of the fire, the “prescription” cocktail, and a conversation as relaxed as I could manage.

  It was clear that Webster and Lilian were doing everything they could to counteract the feeling of doom that arose often during our piano sessions. Lassen’s one-year deadline was hanging over us all.

  During those first months in Santa Fe, I temporarily abandoned any attempt to play with the “right” muscles or to redis-cover any “right” pathways. We concentrated on finding something—anything—that worked, which usually turned out to be compensatory “work-arounds”: minute approximations of the small, reflexive movements that make up a complex piano technique. I might even call some of these approximations microscopic. I made each one consciously rather than reflexively. The problem was that a work-around could look right, and sounded better than I had done on my own, but didn’t feel right. The work-arounds felt all wrong.

  This lack of connection between the musical image and the mechanism I needed to carry it through was deeply frustrating. I was being forced to work against my natural reflexes. When I did reach for a reflex that had been built in for many years BP, it usually resulted in little or no response—the brick-wall effect—or the dreaded “nerve shudder,” or a combination of both. At first, we set a goal to build my tolerance of this distressing process past fifteen minutes at a time. If I lasted for half an hour, it was a good session.

  I had hoped that Webster could “teach” me how to make some of the more subtle movements and could help me open some of my pre-polio pathways. But I gradually discovered that he could only describe—in as many ways as possible, and demonstrate at the keyboard—what the natural movements looked and felt like. Only I would ever be able to find an elusive needle in such a messy haystack.