The Mandolin Lesson (21 page)

We leave the urban environment of Brescia by joining the autostrada that runs across the top of Italy, connecting Turin with Venice. We head towards Venice, sweeping through the open countryside of Lombardy and skirting the lower side of Lake Garda. Just before Verona, we change onto another motorway, heading north to Rovereto and Trento. It takes us parallel along the east side of Lake Garda and also follows the course of the River Adige. We pass signs for famous wine-growing regions; Bardolino, one of my favourite red wines, on the left and Valpolicella on the right. As we reach our destination, I am aware that we are making a considerable ascent. To the left is Mount Baldo and to the right are the Lessini Mountains.

We alight from the coach at Ala, a short walk from the historic centre. I breathe the thin sharp air. It is very cool and heavily scented with wood smoke. When we reach the narrow street at the side of the theatre, I can't help thinking that the character of the town is just like other mountain resorts I have been to. This isn't a ski resort, but I can imagine a sprinkling of snow and people milling around in their padded ski suits, woollen hats and snow boots. I am really excited by the transition from being in a city to, within a couple of hours, being in a mountain town on the way to the Austrian border. It is a completely different landscape and unforeseen treat. One of the things I love about my mandolin lessons is that I constantly get to see new locations that I would never have dreamt of visiting as a tourist.

Inside the
Teatro Giacomo Sartori,
preparations are in progress for the concert. It is being recorded for television and there are technicians with wires and cables. The concert doesn't start until a quarter to nine and there has been no opportunity to eat so far. Feeling hungry, I ascertain that we have time to pop out for a snack. Deborah and I, and Deborah's mum, who is also with us, decide to take a walk to see what we can find. Our investigation culminates in the only open bar. There are no sandwiches left, so Deborah and I stave off hunger with cappuccinos and chocolate-covered biscuits.

The Maestro has rehearsed a Sartori work with the two of us called ‘
Maliziosette
'. I am not sure if I like the title of the ‘mischievous seven'. It can also mean ‘malicious', but I feel certain that the composer didn't have that interpretation of the word in mind. It is dedicated to the female mandolinists of Ala. The Maestro has the idea that we should join the ladies of the orchestra for this unscheduled item that will be announced. We don't know when it will be announced, but I imagine it will be an encore item. However, the idea gets abandoned because the television cables make it impossible to add further chairs to the stage and I am relieved because I feel that I am not wearing the correct clothes. I didn't bring my concert dress to Italy. When the idea was sprung upon me, I didn't worry because I thought it was a relaxed concert, but I don't want to appear, even fleetingly, on television wearing clothes that don't blend.

The concert is a wonderful celebration, not only of Sartori's music – it is the fiftieth anniversary of his death – but also of other composers from his era such as Raffaele Calace and Hermann Ambrosius. Afterwards, we are invited to an adjoining room where an excellent supper is laid out for the orchestra and hangers-on like me. There is all manner of finger food. I feast on wedges of cold pizza, topped with olives, anchovies, capers and mushrooms. Feeling restored by the food, I chat with my friends from the orchestra and we drink freshly made espresso. There is a marvellous feeling of euphoria after the concert and I am caught up in it. I feel energised, animated and happy, just as if I had been playing with them.

Backwards and forwards, I slip effortlessly between my Italian life and my English life.

In the beginning, I had wanted to play the mandolin more beautifully. This entailed studying the mandolin in its native country and required me to travel there to learn new skills, a different technique, in order to be able to play more beautifully. Then, after technique, there was the question of aesthetics: what is and what is not beautiful? This is a fundamental aspect of, and intrinsic to, Italian culture. I found myself not just making physical journeys to and around Italy, but also learning about and assimilating the culture. I thought I had gone to learn to play my instrument better and I ended up being changed profoundly.

I have refined further my already well-developed ideas about food, I have changed the way I dress to a more classical European style and I have made adjustments to harmonise the interior of my home. I move between the two languages, talking, reading, thinking, and even dreaming in a mixture of Italian and English. My garden has acquired pots of pelargoniums, herbs such as rosemary and even a fig tree. Everything about my existence is touched by Italy.

So absorbed am I in all things Italian that some friends quite genuinely think I will move to Italy permanently. Some joke that I have a secret Italian lover. They are mistaken. Others still think, quite wrongly, that I must be making a fortune, simply because of an assumption that frequent trips abroad equates with business and making money. I must be giving concerts and earning huge sums of money. But it is quite the reverse. I am making a great sacrifice in terms of money, energy and time, not to mention taking a risk by taking time out of my career in England and all this in order to achieve my objective of playing more beautifully.

There are a number of things troubling me, and in my third year of study, I realise that my journey is not just about music. Neither is it solely about the huge impact a different culture has had on both my music and my life. The journey is no longer a physical journey at all. Instead, it has become another journey, one in which I travel deep within. It is an interior journey, a private and intimate exploration.

Sometimes, people cannot understand what it is I am doing in Italy. I often find it best to say that I am doing research, which in a way is true but is also a bit misleading. By saying that I am researching, and I am finding out about the Italian method of playing and new repertoire, I give people something they can relate to. It is consistent with the status of a professional musician who has a Master's degree. However, to say I am starting all over again and relearning something in a different way seems incomprehensible in our materialistic society. People say, “but what are you are getting out of it?” I often hear myself saying that I will obtain a diploma, a certificate, or a piece of paper at the end to prove my proficiency as a mandolinist. This is easier, because people understand that I will get something. Some people think I am already proficient and don't understand the point of learning a foreign way of doing something. Many people miss the point altogether. I just have to do whatever is necessary to play more beautifully. Through music, by playing expressively and by teaching effectively, I touch the lives of other people. I have to do the best I can and I have to follow this path. I have to do this to be true to myself and to honour my spirit.

*

I am walking along the
Via del Santo
. At the end of my lesson, I told the Maestro that I had an important errand to run. He probably thinks I am shopping, but I am returning to the tomb of St Anthony. I have not seen it since my first visit to Padua many years ago. We were staying as a family in Venice and my son was very small, still being pushed in the buggy. Recently, I saw a documentary at home on television that highlighted the tomb of St Anthony as an important place of pilgrimage and the site of many healing miracles.

The shops of this street are filled with religious paraphernalia. There are all manner of statues, mostly of St Anthony, appropriately, and the Virgin Mary, as well as crucifixes, rosaries and icons. There is something for every purse and every taste. I notice a restaurant where we once had dinner. It doesn't seem to have changed much. In the
piazza
in front of the
Basilica di Sant'Antonio,
there are a number of souvenir stalls selling garish plastic statues of the Madonna and rosaries, as well as postcards and miniature wooden models of Pinocchio.

At the site of the tomb, I stand in the line of pilgrims waiting to pass and to touch the sarcophagus of St Anthony whilst saying a prayer. As we file slowly round, passing through the sumptuous chapel, I find myself touching the cold marble of the tomb with my fingers. Previously, I had been preoccupied with my thoughts, desires and prayers. Suddenly, my mind is completely blank. I cannot utter the words I want to. I cannot even form the words in my mind. My fingers slide over the silky stone. All I am aware of is being enveloped by a feeling of great peace and stillness. It is as if everything stops for a few seconds.

I place some paper money in a box and I choose a large candle, which I place on a pile to be lit at a future Mass in the Basilica. I hear the chanting of a priest celebrating a Mass in progress. The sung liturgy is evocative and timeless. I wish I could join them, but I have to return to the station to catch the train back to Bologna. The chanting haunts me all the way back to the station. I can still feel the moment at the tomb when I had the sense of momentarily connecting with eternity. I was not in the past and I was not in the future. I was in the moment and conscious of an overwhelming presence, a feeling of acceptance, of contentment.

Just before Christmas, I find myself in Brescia whilst my son is far around the other side of the world in Brazil on a concert tour with his choir.

We have only just become used to the idea of my spending time in Italy whilst he is still at school in England. Now I am still in Europe, but he is in South America. Despite the thorough preparations and the elaborate security procedures in place, Brazil suffers from the tensions of great poverty and great wealth co-existing. I am worried. It is the nature of mothers to worry about their offspring. I try to focus on the wonderful opportunity he has, possibly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, to see a new and exotic country.

This month, I make a new friend from another faraway place. She is called Miki and she has come from Japan to live in Italy, whilst studying the mandolin at Padua.

On Saturday, I attend another Sartori concert given again by the Mandolin and Guitar Orchestra
‘Città di Brescia
' – this time at the
Teatro Colonna
in Brescia. Afterwards, Talia, Giovanna, another non-musician friend of Giovanna's and I all go for a pizza.

Talia works in the family-run music shop in Brescia. She is wonderful at keeping an extensive stock of mandolin music. I am always popping in to look through to see if there is anything I haven't got and she always has time for a chat.

This evening Talia and I are quite hungry, but Giovanna and her friend are less so. They decide to share a pizza. When the waiter comes to take our order, we ask for three pizzas and an extra plate and drinks. The waiter doesn't bat an eyelid. In fact, he is most obliging. I have seen this before in Italy. It is so normal to provide whatever the customer requires in a restaurant. Often a request to remove or add an item to a dish, or to provide a simple basic dish not on the menu, such as
ragù
for a child, is met with pleasure and without fuss. In England, many restaurants are over anxious to press unwanted food on you in an effort to make more money. Cooking something that doesn't appear on the menu is unheard of. This probably has something to do with a deep cultural difference. Until recently, eating out in a restaurant in England has been seen as something of a luxury – a treat, rather than a necessity.

*

Travelling affords me time to myself. I have time to reflect on life and its meaning. I am enormously fascinated by this subject. It is a fascination that goes back to my infant years. I remember my maternal grandmother telling me at a very tender age that I was ‘philosophical'. I have never been philosophical in a dry, academic sense though. It is much more practical, like my teaching. I want to know how the life process works and how we can achieve success easily and more effectively.

Like everyone else, I want to be happy, and on the whole I am happy and content. Through music, I have achieved enormous pleasure and joy. Practising privately in the seclusion of one's own room can be meditative, therapeutic, restorative, healing. Teaching is deeply satisfying because it is possible to communicate all of this to my pupils. I watch them grow in confidence and joy as they progress, knowing that I am enabling them in the process.

Performance is quite different. It is risky, precarious and unpredictable. There are great highs and great lows: elation when things go well, and post mortems, guilt, blame, anger and sadness when things go badly. Performance can be competitive, open to analysis and therefore criticism and judgement, rather than just being and celebrating life.

The Maestro has a sensible didactic approach. He says we should practise technique by itself and then we should play music. When we play music, we should think about the musical interpretation only, enjoying the music for itself, and forget about technique. In other words, it is no use worrying about my right wrist movement whilst I am trying to make the music sing. It is confusing to think about both things at once. Eventually the technique will become second nature and it will just happen, leaving the mind free to concentrate on art, on making the music sound beautiful.

However, it is sometimes difficult to achieve. In the lesson, anxious to please, I find myself conscious of the right hand and distracted from my art.

I start work today on the first of six partitas by Filippo Sauli. I am working from a newly published edition, in which my teacher has transcribed the partitas. The first partita is in D minor, which after G minor is my favourite key. I sometimes worry that I adore the melancholy of minor keys. I hope it doesn't mean that I am a sad person. I just find they resonate with me. They are so expressive, reflecting not just sadness and suffering but also tenderness, intimacy and a sense of spirituality.

I also love the names of the Baroque dance movements that make up this suite:
Allemanda, Sarabanda, Corrente, Bourée, Giga, Minuetto
. The
Sarabanda
, my preferred dance, is to be played lightly. Apparently, I play it too heavily. Also, I have to play the
Corrente
, the
Giga
and the
Minuetto
much faster. I hope I will be able to manage this next month.