The Concert Pianist (34 page)

Ursula brushed a tear from her eye and watched in dumb suspense as Benno left the stage and the lights came down a notch, and the wait for Vadim began. She heard the applause before she saw him, and suddenly he was there, crossing the stage quickly, a large figure, masterful, energetic, coming authoritatively forward into the blaze of applause, bowing, deadpan, but hugely focused, getting on with it, and then he turned and the clapping subsided, and her heart was in her mouth as she saw him ready himself on the stool, handkerchief tossed inside the piano, cuffs touched, and suddenly he was off, straight in, hands into the keys, wrists low, minimal movement, vibrating out the soft rapid C major chords of the Waldstein Sonata, his energy released into the auditorium instantly; and as her nervousness converted to spellbound involvement, and Vadim seemed possessed by the spirit of music, its bristling vitality and headlong impetus, recreating the adventure of the piece in his own terms, discovering bar by bar its turns and flourishes, so that Beethoven as they listened was coming up as if for the first time: as she listened to all this on the edge of her seat already, watching him transformed by concentration, a different person, she was excited and humbled and almost ashamed by the accident of her meagre acquaintance with such a consummate talent; and as the movement progressed and he continued to heighten his grip on everything that passed in the stream of sound, she looked at his focused profile, so alien to her now, with the
admiration
of a stranger, as though she could never know personally the real being who played like this, could know him only in this state of enthralment, sharing his possession, submitting to it, feeling the full marvellous force of his intelligence as it drove his fingers forward. This then was Vadim, living life a million times faster than all of them - wondrous, awesome, utterly enslaving.

She wondered, after the Waldstein, how Philip could possibly follow on from this, and felt almost guilty at the thought and distressed about not dissuading him. He was a great pianist, too, different to Vadim. He would find his way, she hoped. He was not strong; mentally he was not strong; he was living on the edge of a precipice, and throughout the Funeral March Sonata, which Vadim played with such command and electricity and dark colouring, she was unable to take her mind off the prospect of Philip's playing, the awful vulnerability of his arrival on the platform, the agony of self-possession required, the whole hazard of finding concentration equal to his talent, and the occasion, and what had gone before. It turned her stomach. The moment was drawing closer, and every second Vadim was growing stronger. When the Funeral March came, she found tears in her eyes again; how gravely Vadim participated in all the music could mean; how profoundly it struck her now, the reality of this music; and then in the finale she became torpid, almost drained, so utterly exhausted by tension and emotion that when the applause started she could hardly bring herself to clap, but just listened instead to the wild frenzy of release around her, the hard clapping, as if the audience were determined to refract and discharge the energy Vadim had transmitted, to pay him back for as long as it would take to recover from the shock of his brilliance.

She gathered herself slowly, people pushing past her. She was dreading the task ahead.

She must go to see him. She must get him through the interval.

The
applause hit him hard, deafening, people rising, already standing, and he had not played a note, the encouragement was startling, a barrage of welcome. He bowed slowly, taking it in, looking to the back, aware of friendly faces with smiles and raised hands, cheering him on; and he nodded and acknowledged, hands gripped tight, feeling rather weird, even light-headed, hoping it would settle, or sharpen up when he was facing the keyboard, that long-awaited moment.

He flicked his tails back over the stool. He felt good doing that, in charge, and prepared himself, audience hushing down, the last moments before commitment was irreversible, important not to rush, to try and get an image, the sound and flow of the piece in his head already. He remembered telling himself that he had everything to offer and nothing to fear, that he was unique in his way and must now just relax, be himself, as though alone. He felt a tremor in his hands as he raised them, but they did what he wanted with that first phrase, and now he was locked in the moment-to-moment of it, the hot burning awareness of the sound he was making, the dotted phrase, so melancholy, travelling out now. The keys were easier than he remembered. They depressed as he wished and his fingers seemed at last comfortable, even though he was constantly adjusting to the acoustic, his intimate relation to sounds travelling hundreds of feet and heard at a distance, qualified here and there by a cough or a rustle. He had to loosen up a little. The phrasemaking was becoming tight, and yet this tightness was his arm's way of staying in control. There would come a point when he would feel as he played, but he had to be careful, modest, because not everything seemed ready yet; perhaps reflexes were slower now. He must find his way.

The fortissimo section was secure, well graded, and it was good to leap at those chords, to embed one's fingers deeply, allowing the muscles of his hand to tense at full strength, recovering command, but as the piece moved to its second summit he felt that he had lost his sensitivity to something, and that the pulse was false and the sound did not carry properly. And, as he played the climax of semiquavers that spilled from the top of the piano, like a million leaves falling through the air and being tricked with by the wind, stirred into flurries before dispersing, the audience seemed remote, like the painting of a crowd in the corner of his eye, and he sensed he
had
lost their energy: suddenly they were not helping him. He strived to listen harder, to envelop himself in the acoustic - although now the sense of disembodied sound, sound travelling out beyond his control, was distracting, as though his perspective and the audience's were at odds.

The applause after the second Rachmaninov Prelude was warm, still committed, so something was going on. He bowed quickly and thought distractedly of Vadim, whom he had hugged after the first half, tears in his eyes. One of them at least would have been great tonight. He had to take strength from that shattering performance of the Funeral March Sonata. There was a current of something that he could still latch on to.

He felt even more frustrated with the Schubert, as though the Impromptu did not allow something he could do and required something he could not do. His dynamics were too familiar to him, the colour changes a rehash, and now that the piece was launched, going smoothly and uninterestingly along, it was too late to stop and come back in the right groove: and as he played, concentrating for all he was worth, the awful feeling came over him that time was slipping away, concert time, during which nothing much was happening to him or anyone, and that he had to abandon something in order not to be bored with this relationship.

He went off stage this time, to allow the audience a break. He took a sip of water from a plastic beaker, felt them waiting for him but not tensely enough, as if they were still recovering from the impact of Vadim's playing and having trouble concentrating; and he suffered a stab of anguish at the thought that this was his great moment, possibly his last concert, and that his desperate desire to do something special had been an impossible dream, and he now had the sense of having to fight through the feeling, on top of everything else, that the whole opportunity was sliding away. He tried to focus - the B minor Sonata ahead of him, the Funeral March Sonata behind him. He tried to remember his sense of the two pieces, Serebriakov's words, his own ideas, but the thread of all that was irretrievable, a million miles away now, and when he went back out, he stepped on to the stage with a sinking heart, thinking that this performance was bound to be mediocre; even his nerves were insufficient, and a horrible lassitude broke over him as he went across the platform to renewed applause, this time less ecstatic, and took his seat again, gazing at the keyboard
w
ith forlorn uncertainty. He could tell already. It wasn't there. The atmosphere was slack. He sat waiting, a long wait. Waiting for quiet, and beyond quiet for absolute silence, pin-drop tension mounting all the time, intensifying suddenly to a pitch he could no longer bear. Now he had them. Now the current was live.

Later, in bed, in the small hours, going through every inch of the recital in his head, he recalled the clarity of that moment, becoming fully awake in sharpened light, a way to attack the phrase, fingers curled, a falling arpeggio, then driving chords, martial, propulsive, getting stuck in and meaning business with the instrument - something came over him or into him. At the time, it felt like rage.

He was going at it much harder and faster than planned, and this was disconcerting because adrenalin had to do it now, lift agility and reflexes through the awkwardnesses of the opening page: semiquaver fourths, contrary-motion arpeggios, he saw them coming and going within his compass, playing of bite and energy and dispatch, the geography of the keyboard, spaces and intervals, coming into muscular focus, every note struck in the centre, the tone penetrating, yes, a plangent intensity that was his hallmark sound reaching out, grabbing the audience; and then the tender flow of the second-subject aria, a slight relaxation, but a long way to go yet, and now the half-tones and inner melodies and liquid accompaniment, the sense of provisional homecoming, Chopin at his most fulfilled and expressive.

In the development section he was alert again, hearing new things, an onsurge of latent drama, the first subject transformatively propelled, but inconclusively so, as if this were a search for the material's true destiny and Philip was driving that hunt, then sidestepping into a parallel reverie, the wandering dream that interrupted Chopin's quest for order.

Something had clicked, he was certain, by the end of the first movement. He had an ingrained sense of command, and as he dusted his forehead with a hanky, he wondered how long this renewed mastery had been incubating, because it seemed now so assured, so deeply founded, so new. He felt the tension of his own desire for expression as a fabulous power over sound.

But he had to pay attention before the scherzo, which started molto vivace, in a gossamer rush of quavers, leggierissimo, and had
to
be whirring along before it began, like a butterfly, already airborne, flickering on a current of air that whooshed to the height of the keyboard and down again; and as always with this movement you had to think your hand into a shimmering lightness of touch before contact with the keys, so everything was immediately on course.

In the third movement he began to feel something drawing on him, an undertow. The first two movements had roused all his powers, all aspects of touch and dexterity exercised to fullest life; all reflexes, all impulses, everything he could be aware of was drawn to the tips of his fingers, and now the music simply drew him into its mood of stoic tranquillity; and he felt as he played the full value of every note, the rise and fall of long lines, the essence of the work flowing through his arms. And as the movement closed he felt in his whole being how the final bars arrested everything that had gone before, all the momentum behind the first two movements, everything that had contended to have a place in the sonata was laid to rest by the last cadence; and yet, as his fingers compressed the low B major chord, softly resonating, almost humming; as his fingers depressed that last B major chord, a lovely chord, a chord that leaves a dying glow of sound before its release, a chord that collects and gathers everything into a carrying softness, even in that peerless moment of resolution infinite energy was stored. And as he held fast to that last chord and heard its balm travel deep into the auditorium, enthralling his listeners until the last sounds had long since died away, so he felt an upsurge of tempestuous energy.

The implacability of those initial octaves, great bars of sound, bottom, middle, top and round again, that set the instrument ringing, rousing the audience - like winching a crossbow to the point of maximum tension before releasing the bolt - even as he hit the keys with a steel touch, he felt the teetering precariousness of the energy they released. All his strength and nervous energy was evoked, set tingling in his neck and shoulders.

The audience were moving, getting on to the edge of their seats.

He had it, that ominous rhythm in his body, and as he watched his left hand stretch and creep on its belly, he was suffused by the eeriness of music that started soft and low in the keyboard, rocking and loping, its innate violence in tether, and then cranked up an
octave,
flecked with desperation, like a stalking beast barely in control of its own ferocity.

The B major chord was like cannon shot, and now as the rhythms reconfigured and energy exploded, and as he played with full attack, detonating chords, which released teeming right-hand semiquavers over a stentorian tenor motif, he felt he was playing for his life in every sense, in the midst of furious battle, in the grip of relentless drama and constant technical danger that he had to outwit and surpass. Bass octaves thundered. His semiquavers were super-articulate. He was hearing everything, desperation billowing from the instrument, because the situation was desperate, absolutely desperate, and as his hands converged and the main theme came back but with more to do in the left hand, complicating the rhythm, now at the limit of urgency, he sensed in a flash that he was fighting for Poland, a sidelight that vanished as the first subject cranked up an octave and once again he was riding for his life, caught in the current, with its shifts of voicing and harmonic slinks like a churning of tonal mud under cavalry hooves.