by Rick Blechta
No, I wasn’t about to fall prey to a cheap trick cooked up by some bored journalist. I crumpled the letter and sent it winging across the room. Perfect swish into the trash basket. Morgan scores a textbook three-pointer to put the Lakers ahead by one point! The crowd goes wild. Crumpling the page of score, I bounced off the bed to get the best angle and again tossed another paper basketball in a high arc. This shot bounced off the rim, but still managed to go in. Maybe I would have been happier as a basketball player.
Reaching across the bed, I grabbed the remaining sheet, the violin part. Glancing down at it, the music began again in my head. I couldn’t believe someone would honestly think I wouldn’t spot such an obvious set-up. The music intrigued me, though.
I took Tristan out, holding him under my chin while I tightened the bow. The tuning needed lowering a notch or two. The damned piano that night had been about 446, and we’d arrived at the hall too late to get a technician to lower it. My ear rebels when I have to tune that high.
Propping the music in my case, I tried the opening measures. Almost three octaves up from that bottom doublestop, all on the dominant. Some really odd passing tones thrown in made the run sound almost jazzy. It did remind me of some of the harmonies Beethoven had used in those final string quartets. I needed to play it through about twenty-five times before I got the phrase to begin to flow correctly. The next run was even worse. There was something indescribably ferocious, yet melancholy about the two phrases, as odd as that sounds. Walking around the room as I played, I searched for a fingering that might make the notes easier. Then I got to work on the part of the exposition that filled the remaining measures on the page.
I practised that page of music for over two hours. How could I stop? I was in love.
***
Roddy finally gave up waiting in the hotel restaurant and knocked on my door at eight. I’d promised to meet him for breakfast at seven fifteen. Our plane for Zurich with connections to Vienna left at ten fifteen. At least this time he’d thoughtfully snagged two croissants from the bread basket. Usually when I’m late for breakfast, he lets me starve.
Fumbling with my robe, I padded to the door. Roddy whisked in without a by-your-leave.
“Good morning, princess,” he said, handing me a napkin containing his “care” package. “My, but you were up late last night! Heard your damned scratching all the way down the hall. Surprised somebody didn’t complain. I almost did. What was that you were playing, by the way? Sounded a bit like Beethoven, but I didn’t recognize it.”
I quickly looked back at Tristan, but he was snug in his case with the two photocopies of the manuscript folded under him.
“It’s, ah, a concerto by one of Czerny’s students that I ran across last summer. I’m trying to decide whether it’s worth recording with the New York Phil in January.”
Roddy seemed to accept my story. If it doesn’t have a piano in it, he feels it isn’t worth his time. With the limo out to the airport imminent, getting everything packed up was.
He did the honours with the laptop I’d started carrying in order to keep my life together, such as itinerary, expenses and hot communications from friends, Marty or Rocky. I’d also recently been talked into editing some of the violin works of Bach and putting together a book of orchestral excerpts for students. The laptop stored all that, too.
Since most of my clothes would need to be cleaned at our next stop anyway, we just threw them into my suitcases and the trunk for my gowns. While Roddy stage-managed the two bellboys down to the lobby, I grabbed Tristan and my shoulder bag and ran for the elevators. We made it onto the plane with two minutes to spare. The crew was not amused.
Having missed most of the previous night’s sleep, I wanted to spend our time in the air for the two-stage jump across Europe trying to doze. Roddy had the day off, but I had a rehearsal with the Vienna Phil and a concert that evening and needed to be fresh. But try as I might, I couldn’t get that scrap of music out of my head. It was scary. The musical ideas sure as hell sounded like Beethoven. Who had really written them? It was preposterous to think that something as important as a concerto by one of the world’s greatest composers could have gone missing. The old boy had left enough sketchbooks around for somebody somewhere to have gotten wind of it. And it wasn’t like this was a piece Beethoven had written when he was three years old, either. Aside from the date, the complex harmonies hinted at in the violin part could only have been conceived during the last years of his life. The person who’d left that envelope had certainly stuck the hook deep into me. Would he contact me as promised in his note? I had to see more of this marvellous music. I hadn’t lied about one thing to Roddy: if the rest of the work lived up to that first page, I was going to record it, even if it had been written by Beethoven’s garbage man.
***
The media was out in full cry at the Vienna airport. God bless Marty, my record company and their publicists. It had been like this ever since the concert where Franz had died: TV lights, fifty microphones shoved in my face like some bristly electronic porcupine, questions shouted at me from every corner and paparazzi, always the damned paparazzi, the journalistic equivalent of a good dose of crabs—pardon my French.
“Tory! Look this way, please!”“Tory, what does it feel like to have the three recordings at the top of the classical charts?” “Have you heard from Paolo Cippolone lately?” (referring to one of my more public indiscretions) “Is the conductor going to make it alive through the concert tonight?”
It gets to be a bore. Different city/same questions.
Then one particularly pushy reporter, a tall, gray-haired man dressed in a perfectly tailored, three-piece suit, slid in right next to me, and oddly, his cronies backed away. Warning bells went off in my head, and I glanced at the record company’s rep. She looked particularly apprehensive, but I’d handled reporters like this before: the ones who look at anyone famous and see a target in the middle of their back.
“Tell me, Miss Morgan, do you have any comment on Easterbrook’s review of your concert last night?” he said in crisp, German-tinged English.
Having made it a policy not to read reviews, especially negative ones, I sweetly asked, “Who’s Easterbrook?”
The reporter looked highly affronted. “John Easterbrook. Britain’s most influential and respected music critic.” The way he made it sound, I’d asked him who the Queen was.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted the rep pushing her way in from the side of the scrum, no doubt to rescue me from the sharks. Flashing my most charming smile, I asked, “And what did Mr. Easterbrook say about my concert? I don’t usually read reviews.”
The grin I received back made me realize I’d stepped neatly into his trap. The man’s mouth may have smiled, but his eyes glittered like cold steel. “I’ll read a few of the choicer comments, shall I?” My adversary made a show of pulling out a pair of reading glasses and carefully unfolding a newspaper. “First, there’s his headline: ‘Violinist Scrapes By.’” Someone near the back of the scrum guffawed like a hyena. “Then he goes on: ‘Last night I wasted my entire evening sitting through one of the most boringly miserable concerts it has ever been my misfortune to attend. Victoria Morgan (she of the ego supposedly as massive as the media blitz trumpeting her current tour of this side of the pond) deigned to honour us with her presence (and for which the audience had to pay very handsomely indeed) and then proceeded to play a concert the kindest description of which would have to be ‘woefully substandard’. Why anyone would pay to hear this woman scratch away on a violin, quite frankly, is beyond this reviewer.’”
The reporter paused, peering over his glasses to see what effect his words were having on me. I kept my face blank with great difficulty, but I know my ears were burning with shame.
When I didn’t respond, the reporter continued to the end of the review, and I listened with growing bewilderment. The only kind words were directed at Roddy, who was described as being sorely abused having to accompany a music
ian whom Easterbrook regarded as a “media-created darling who probably has enough talent to be a modestly good concertmistress in a second-rank orchestra. Victoria Morgan’s only real claim to any kind of fame is that she’s a self-confessed adulteress and that one of the world’s greatest conductors lost his life because of her actions.”
A profound silence fell when the hatchet job came to a close. Even the normal noise of a busy airport seemed to have faded into the background. Everybody waited to see what the next act in this little drama might be. The reporter, with great deliberation, put his glasses back into his jacket pocket. The record company rep looked at me helplessly, probably seeing her job going down the toilet.
I stood there frozen, unable to verbally kick his pompous ass. Why? He certainly deserved it.
It was because I had given an inadequate performance the previous evening, or maybe it went deeper than that. What could I say to defend myself? Most of what he’d said had been true—in a way. If I hadn’t pigheadedly gone ahead with that concert, Franz would still be alive, and the Viennese had not forgiven me when Austria’s greatest living musician took a bullet intended for me. I had committed adultery on more than one brainless occasion and had even been dumb enough to admit it in public.
I was about to say a lame “no comment” and scuttle, head down, for the nearest exit when Roddy galloped to my rescue.
He pushed two reporters to the side and stopped face-to-face with my accuser. He barked out an angry phrase in German (providing translation to me later), “I resent your attitude, sir, and I totally reject everything you have just said!”
The reporter looked nonplussed, answering back in his native tongue. “Who are you?”
“I am, sir, the ‘sorely abused accompanist’. I don’t know what’s caused this vendetta that Easterbrook and, by extension, you are carrying on against Miss Morgan, but I can state categorically in front of everyone present that she is one of the most supremely gifted musicians I have ever had the honour to make music with, and I have worked with the best! I am ashamed as a gentleman to have witnessed seeing Miss Morgan pilloried so unjustly.” Roddy turned to address the now silent media scrum. “Tonight my colleague is performing with your country’s finest orchestra, and tomorrow evening it is our pleasure to present a concert for violin and piano. I invite everyone here to attend and judge for yourselves. Our recordings—”
The tall reporter butted in, attempting to regain control, “Yes, yes, but recordings can be spliced together note-for-note if need be. Isn’t this what they’ve done with her recording of—”
Roddy gave his answer in one word of English, “Balls!” then, turning on his heel, took my arm and forced a route for us as all the reporters finally rediscovered their tongues and began shouting questions as they followed in our wake.
We didn’t break stride as we passed through the revolving doors and got into our waiting limo. As the door shut, I looked through the tinted glass over the heads of the media to see the poor record company rep scrambling to deal with the press.
Roddy tapped the driver on the shoulder, “Take us to our hotel, please.”
“But, mein Herr, shouldn’t we wait for Fräulein Weiss?”
“No. She’ll be tied up with the press for some time. We’re rather tired and don’t wish to wait.”
The driver shrugged, saying, “Very good, mein Herr,” as he started the engine.
I sank into my corner of the back seat, still numb over what had happened. Roddy patted my knee.
“Thanks, Roddy,” I said softly.
“The only thanks necessary are two incredible performances the next two nights. Time to get to work, my dear! I’ve just put you out on a pretty long limb and then handed them a saw.”
“She’s an intensely personal player, a bit too idiosyncratic for some people’s taste, perhaps, but one can’t deny her mastery of the instrument and the incredible emotional energy she brings to her playing.”
—Craig Collet, music critic for the Globe and Mail
Chapter 3
TORY
The mess at the airport had totally knocked us off an already tight schedule, so the driver didn’t even have time to drop Roddy off at the hotel before my rehearsal with the Vienna Phil in the “Golden Hall” of Vienna’s famous Musikverein.
This far into my career, I don’t usually get anxious about anything involving performing, but I was on edge that day. I haven’t been the most popular musician with Austria’s greatest orchestra since Franz was killed. After all, it was me who’d been meant to die. My beloved mentor had instead calmly stepped in front of me and taken a bullet with my name on it. Needless to say, whatever popularity I had in his native country had plummeted. Every Austrian seemed to blame me for the tragedy.
Then Marty told me two weeks before my current tour began that I’d been asked to deputize for a rising young Russian violinist who had cancelled out on a booking with the Vienna Phil. I was as surprised as anyone and jumped at the chance to get back in the orchestra’s good books by filling in. As luck would have it, the proposed day was free, even though it meant that I’d be concertizing six days straight. As the conductor for that concert was a good friend, I was really looking forward to the gig.
After the debacle at the airport, what I needed most at that point was a good nap, not what greeted me as I rushed onstage. It wasn’t the sunny smile of the great Spanish conductor, Ernesto Segurro, but the scowl of Tobias Ebler, one of those real anal fixates who often masquerade as conductors. The look he gave me would have curdled milk. Actually, his puss looked like curdled milk.
“Guten Tag, Fräulein Morgan. So nice of you to join us,” said the Teutonic twit.
“Where’s Ernie?” I asked, totally stunned.
“Maestro Segurro has broken his leg. I have been asked to deputize for him.”
“Broken his leg?” I repeated, uselessly.
“That’s what I said,” Ebler smirked, “and I was just explaining to the orchestra how our time here today is so limited. Wouldn’t you agree?”
I smiled my sweetest smile as I turned to the musicians. “Normally I would agree, Ebler, but this orchestra has a reputation for performing miracles. I don’t think lack of rehearsal time will be a problem for them.”
I had thrown down the gauntlet. Several of the musicians hid smirks behind their instruments. My remark had been childish and extremely stupid. The steely glint in Ebler’s eyes made it clear that he was going to make me pay dearly for my insult.
Ernie Segurro, the original conductor, and I had worked together often, and in consideration of the limited rehearsal time, we’d agreed to repeat a program we’d done the previous year in San Francisco. Now they’d gone and hired the conductor who probably disliked me the most. The one time we’d shared a stage, it was a wonder Ebler and I hadn’t come to blows. Too late now to decently back out. This was Austria, where my reputation was already mud.
Ebler’s bad reputation (among most musicians, at least) centered around an attitude right out of the nineteenth century: The Conductor As God. It was the main reason Ebler hadn’t had a permanent position in over five years. There was no doubt whatsoever about his conducting ability, it’s just that most musicians won’t put up with that sort of nonsense any more. Ebler’s people skills were definitely stunted. No, make that non-existent.
I asked the oboist for an A and quickly tuned. “Now, Maestro, what would you like to begin with? Beethoven or Bruch?”
Bruch’s “Scottish Fantasy” can be a challenging bit of music. Originally written for the legendary Spanish virtuoso, Sarasate, it requires relatively solid technique and passion, but at the same time it has to sound unforced, almost ingenuous in its execution. If the soloist seems like she’s working hard, the whole effect of the work is blown—but that’s not why I’d been programming the piece.
Everywhere I got booked for appearances with orchestras, promoters kept asking for “The Lark Ascending” by Vaughan Williams, and frankly, I’d begun tir
ing of it. When you play something endlessly, it gets difficult to keep it sounding fresh. The Bruch was the obvious answer to my musical boredom and for the promoter’s demands. It has the same appeal as “The Lark”: the hauntingly beautiful landscape it paints, substituting sound for brushstrokes. Audiences at the concerts where I’d programmed the “Scottish Fantasy” seemed to agree.
Then there was the Beethoven. The only reason I’d dreamed of programming it was that Ernie and I both shared the same vision of the piece. This concerto is a nasty thing to perform, primarily because it is firmly not a virtuoso piece. The soloist actually spends a great deal of time accompanying the orchestra, and that’s unusual for a concerto. The notes of the solo part are also not particularly violinistic in many ways, while at the same time the work is intensely violinistic. If all you’re interested in is pyrotechnics, then you should firmly stay away from this masterwork. One has to be a musician to play it, not a “violin technician”. The phrasing must always remain subtle and supple, and the work’s real beauty only becomes apparent when it’s approached with humility. Many violinists feel it to be one of the toughest works in the repertoire.
Characteristically, I’d decided to learn it when I was twelve, mastering the notes on the sly, even though my teacher had strictly forbidden it. By great good luck, I’d never had a chance to program it around that time, since it would have been a travesty. I was rightly scared silly of the concerto by the time I’d matured a few years.
I had stayed away from it until Franz Zimmermann had taken me under his wing when Rocky and I, by great good fortune, had managed to land jobs in the same orchestra shortly after graduating. That wonderful time had been my real musical education. By then, I’d certainly mastered how to play the violin. Franz, a truly great musician and conductor approaching the end of a long and storied career, had taught me how to play music. His ominous words one bright fall morning, “Now, Liebchen, let’s begin the Beethoven”, had set my heart racing, primarily because his words made it clear he felt that I was finally ready to play it. I haven’t programmed it since without thinking wistfully of him.
