Two-Part Inventions Read online

Mme. Kabalevsky didn’t answer for a moment, and Suzanne feared she’d gone too far. Then the teacher said, “It would be too easy for her. Too comfortable. We can’t make things comfortable. Obstacles are good.”

  Elena had been assigned to the stern and unsmiling Mr. Mitchell, who seemed unmoved by her élan and was attempting to restrain her tendencies toward excessive romanticism and the too-liberal use of rubato.

  It wasn’t long before Suzanne and Elena were best friends. The perspicacious Mme. Kabalevsky noticed this and took to calling them Snow White and Rose Red, Elena with her blond hair and fair skin and Suzanne darker, more sultry-looking. The famous teacher greeted them in the halls this way, as if they were semimythical creatures out of a story. “Snow White and Rose Red with talent,” Mme. Kabalevsky would say, smiling, and then walk on.

  Once, Elena had the nerve to stop her and ask what the story was. “Oh, it doesn’t signify. An old tale of the Grimms’. Two sisters take care of a bear who turns out to be a prince. And then one marries him.”

  “Which one?” Elena asked.

  “I think Snow White,” and Mme. Kabalevsky went on her way.

  “You can have the bear,” Elena said. “I don’t plan to marry anyone.”

  “And who says I do?” Suzanne retorted.

  Elena was the closest friend Suzanne had ever had, apart from Philip. Her confidence and enthusiasm were contagious; everything seemed brighter in her presence, brighter and more manageable. Suzanne never troubled to wonder—as she had with Philip—why Elena had chosen her. She knew. It had to do with each one’s tacitly recognizing not only the talent of the other, but the enormous ambition, what the music meant to them and what their success would mean—though they were still too young to make a clear distinction between the two. What Philip’s companionship had accomplished in high school, Elena’s did at Juilliard: It quickly felt like home. They compared notes on what they were studying, they listened to each other play and gave advice, they played pieces for four hands, and they agreed they were among the most promising students, although there were a few, like Emanuel Ax or Misha Dichter or Garrick Ohlsson, who might be as good or better. Together they sat in the student lounge and took part in the talk, the endless talk about teachers, technique, and music-world gossip.

  The students would gather in clumps in the lounge late in the day, their instrument cases at their feet, scores sticking out of tote bags, the plastic tables covered with cardboard coffee mugs and crumpled napkins, cigarettes burning in ashtrays. Some were recovering after a grueling session with a teacher, others waiting their turn in the practice rooms, which stayed open until ten. They gossiped about the teachers’ eccentricities—who used too much aftershave and who needed a complete makeover—and methods: the motherly encouraging ones and the coolly distant, the patient and the impatient, those who praised too much or never, those who might be alcoholic or homosexual, or who were rivals, or the few who came on to students, male or female . . .

  The pianists, especially those in their first year, compared the teachers’ contradictory demands and instructions. Frank Wallace’s teacher was always urging more pedal, he reported: “She says the piano is not naturally a legato instrument. You have to make it sound like one. And don’t wear shoes with thick soles—you have to really feel the pedal under your feet.” Frank was the only black student in the class, a southern boy from Georgia with astounding technique, so his comments were given special attention. But according to Steve Henderson, a corn-fed boy from Nebraska who looked more like a football player than a musician, his teacher advised just the opposite: “Too much pedal blurs the sound and makes it murky. That’s his mantra. Try for a clean, crisp sound. Crisp, he snaps his fingers. Use the pedal only when you absolutely must. Learn to stretch your fingers instead.”

  Or the teachers differed on the best way to practice. A few demanded their students do scales and arpeggios and chromatics before playing any real music, while Elena’s Professor Mitchell said to forget the exercises. “He says we can get all the technique we need from Bach or Chopin or Liszt. Ruth Laredo never practiced an exercise in her life. Or so he claims.” One required that they play each hand slowly and separately before trying them together, while another found that a waste of time. “Just sit down and sight-read it up to speed. Any decent pianist should know how to sight-read. If you can’t, then practice it until you can,” said Rose Chen’s teacher, Professor Brent. Still another teacher thought that good natural sight-reading—always considered an enviable gift—could be a mixed blessing: “It makes the learning too easy, he says. You’re in danger of a superficial interpretation.” Tanya Borowitz’s teacher was even against practicing slowly, which they had all been taught to do as children. “He says once we can read it through, we should practice it faster than it’s supposed to be, so when you do it at the correct tempo it feels easier.” Some wanted them to read through the score first and analyze it, before even trying it on the piano.

  A few insisted that the wrists be held high, with the fingers forming an arc over the keys, while others preferred the hands held lower, but Simon Valenti’s teacher, the venerable Adele Marcus, said it didn’t matter how they held their hands—whatever was comfortable, as long as the sound was right. “Look at Glenn Gould, those flat hands. Gould says you don’t play the piano with your fingers, but with your mind. And that low chair he uses! You know he cuts several inches off the legs of his chairs? But she said I better not try that here.” And some teachers didn’t mind what fingering they used, so long as it was comfortable, while others seemed personally miffed if they ignored the composer’s fingering notations—why would he have included them if they weren’t important?

  How were they to figure all this out? Suzanne, who dropped in to see Richard whenever she could find time, asked him about the confusing advice. He agreed with Adele Marcus that any technique was fine as long as the music sounded beautiful and faithful. As they all grew more experienced, they would naturally find the methods that suited them best. Meanwhile, he said, they should do what their teachers asked.

  Given the degree of talent and the magnitude of the burgeoning egos assembled in one building, the atmosphere at school was less rawly competitive than might be expected. Perhaps the love of music, such a benign passion, tempered the sharp edges of rivalry. But after the gossip and complaints and talk of the music itself, much of the chatter in the lounge was about what became known jokingly as “the tree falling in the forest,” code words for their own yearnings and doubts and ambitions. “The tree falling in the forest” meant, if it turned out that you spent your life accompanying singers and teaching students, or, even more extreme, as a stockbroker or a travel agent (not unheard of among the graduates), playing alone evenings and weekends in your living room, what did your devotion to music mean then? What reality did your playing have if no one ever heard it, like the tree falling in the forest? Could you still call yourself a musician?

  “Of course you can,” said Simon Valenti, a strapping boy from the Bronx with Italian immigrant parents. “That’s not even a valid question. It’s not the audience that matters. It’s the music, the feeling it gives you, the sound you strive for. For yourself, for the composer. That’s enough.”

  “You say so now,” said Elena. “But would you still think that if you kept trying and no one wanted to hear you? Would you still be so idealistic?”

  “Sure. There’d always be someone who wanted to hear. My family. My students,” said Simon. “I’m not saying I wouldn’t enjoy playing in Carnegie Hall—maybe even the same season as you, Elena. But if I couldn’t, I’d still be happy to have a life with music. I just want to be with the piano, to feel it and touch it. It’s almost like a love relationship—I miss it if I don’t stroke it every day.”

  “I feel exactly that way,” Suzanne broke in. She loved the instrument itself, she said, beyond the music she could coax from it. She loved the look and the feel of it; it was a friend, even a lover. When she said “lover,” a giggle
rippled through the group—it wasn’t a word they used or heard very often.

  Despite the purity of Simon’s argument, and however modest the students appeared, almost all of them privately nursed fantasies of standing onstage in a few years, taking their bows to rousing applause. Only a few honestly felt otherwise. Tanya Borowitz, the timid freckled redhead from New Hampshire, who had memorized the Goldberg Variations when she was still in high school, said at the outset, “I’m going to teach. I can’t go out there onstage. They were always making me do it in high school, and each time I almost passed out from fright. It was no fun at all. The rewards aren’t worth the stress.” The others nodded sympathetically—it made for that much less competition.

  Only a few were bold enough to openly claim their future. Elena was one. “I plan to succeed, and I don’t see why most of us shouldn’t make it. We’re here, after all. If we’re good enough and work hard and cultivate the right connections, plus a little bit of luck . . .”

  They started laughing as her list grew longer. “Is that all?” Rose Chen asked. “Would there be enough stages to accommodate all of us?”

  Though Elena never flaunted her connections, everyone knew she wouldn’t hesitate to use them. Who would? Not that she isn’t really good, they whispered among themselves, but it can’t hurt to have Horowitz and Serkin—yes, the very Rudolf Serkin Suzanne had heard at her first real concert—coming over for dinner every now and then.

  Suzanne listened intently to these conversations, and when she spoke it was with a fervor that she regretted immediately. It embarrassed her to show how ambitious she was, like confessing to some shameful flaw. Yet she was glad to know she wasn’t the only one driven by relentless need. In Brooklyn, from earliest childhood, she’d been regarded as the prodigy. She was used to moving through the neighborhood with her reputation on her sleeve, like an insignia by which people could recognize her. But her classmates here had been hometown wonders, too. The collective fervor in the room was like a cloud that sustained them on a magic carpet.

  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.