The Virtuoso (16 page)

Just as blue is said to evoke sadness, and red, passion or rage, I’ve found there is an equally inexplicable effect drawn from the twenty-four major and minor musical keys. C major suggests majestic splendour; D major, joyful exuberance; E flat major, elegance and grace; E minor has been likened to a maiden dressed in white with a pink bow on her bosom; and Beethoven himself referred to B minor as ‘the black key’. C minor, the key Beethoven turned to more than any other, is the key of melancholy and lament. A desperate plea for deliverance from suffering.

I listened to the concerto, all thirty-five minutes, several times each evening. On the bed or alone at the table with a gin in my hand, eyes closed, moaning along to the music. I no longer thought of it in terms of notes, but as one long, exhaustive thought, a series of yearning demands and weeping sighs. I knew the music so well—I felt the lift of the bow preceding every string entry, every inhale and exhale of the flutes, and when the timpani entered at the end of the cadenza it was more like a heartbeat than a drum. I began to feel as if I’d composed the concerto myself. With the performance inching closer I started mentally rehearsing for the night I’d walk on stage, with an uneasy mixture of exhilaration and bone-chilling dread. I saw myself standing up there, lights aimed down at me from the roof, staring into the crowd,
every seat in the Duke’s Hall filled. I knew that Noël regularly visited his old alma mater for the end-of-year concerts, and in my mind I had him seated in the middle, second row from the front.

I began to think of the virtuoso’s role as being less about simply entertaining and more about fulfilling an extraordinary obligation—to provide the audience with an escape from their lives. I thought about all the great virtuosos of the past and the crowds they had enraptured, yet rather than feeling excitement with being at the threshold of such a league of performers, these thoughts only increased the grip of terror upon me.

I wondered if Liszt—one of the greatest virtuoso musicians ever known—had ever felt this same sense of fear, whether he was racked with self-doubt before walking on stage in Paris, Vienna, Budapest or Rome. Never before had so much been expected of a musician as was of Liszt during the height of his career, the man they called
the God of the piano.
Off-stage he might have locked himself away in a room, practising fourteen hours a day, fighting off depression and melancholia, but the moment he walked out from the wings, there was nothing this man could not play. What’s more, his dashing good looks and Byronic manner—something I certainly didn’t possess—brought a touch of drama to the performance. With the exception of Beethoven, pianists had always held their hands closely to the keys; Liszt, however, would lift his hands a foot in the air and bring them crashing down on the notes, his long
blond hair falling in front of his eyes. The women in the audience would go wild: they flung their jewellery on stage, fainted in the stalls and fought over the green gloves he intentionally left on the stage. I might add that this reaction is completely understandable to anyone who has seen a picture of the man (I only have to glance upon the drawing Ingres sketched of the young Liszt to break out in goose bumps and feel my heart thumping away madly). Indeed, anyone who has witnessed any great virtuoso up on stage can testify to this experience—one which can only be described as complete and utter salvation.

So now it was my turn to sit in the spotlight, coat-tails swept behind my stool, sweat moistening my collar, five hundred pairs of eyes upon me, imploring,
Lift us to the gods.

The more I thought about this night, the more I thought about my aunt’s blunt words and how true they now seemed.

If I was going to be a brilliant pianist, we’d surely all have known about it by now.

Outside of rehearsals the pain in my arm was intensifying; some mornings I’d wake and barely be able to lift it, and only a swig from the bottle kept next to my bed enabled me to rise and face the day. I had to button my shirt with one hand; I couldn’t even hold a saucer to pour a cup of tea. I thought about all the losses I’d endured throughout my life, but how, amongst all these departures, this ailment had never left me. I
couldn’t rid my mind of the image of myself as a child sitting at the kitchen table, writing out the alphabet under the hawklike eye of my aunt, my right hand gripped around my pen, tearing at the page as I wrote, and behind my back, my left hand, clenched in a fist—this
bad
hand that had such an overwhelming desire to grab the pen and glide all over the page, leaving a trail of whooping circles. As I sat at the piano, trying to coax my arm to relax, the C minor concerto in front of me, I had half a mind to ring my aunt and scream at her for all the damage she’d wrought.

I decided that the most sensible way to manage this anxiety was to balance the intensity of my work with the more frivolous rewards of sexual and alcoholic indulgence. And so it began, one sunny afternoon.

I was walking down a quiet avenue in Piccadilly when I noticed an older gentleman, parked at the kerb in a maroon and grey Daimler, staring in my direction. So I held his gaze and walked straight towards his car. When I was only yards away he opened the passenger door and I stepped in and sat beside him, noticing his suit pants wide open, his royal staff displayed in his wrinkly old hand for all the world to see. My presence was only required for a matter of minutes in order to help the struggling brute along his way. And as soon as I had him slumped back, eyes closed, in his shiny maroon leather seat next to me, wearing a crooked grin of something akin to both relief and pain, I plucked his hanky from his top pocket, wiped my hand, laid the
cloth delicately over his lap, then stepped back out onto the street.

I was immensely proud of myself as I marched down the footpath; I couldn’t really remember where I’d been going before being summoned over, but I couldn’t have cared less, nor been more satisfied with my day’s work.

That was the beginning of a series of similarly bold encounters that often commenced with the scantest eye contact at a bus stop, and rapidly progressed to being ravished in a delightfully debased manner in the middle of the day, in a St John’s Wood apartment, or once even in a council chamber, and for which I was remunerated handsomely. They were mostly brief and wordless exchanges (though occasionally preceded or followed by oysters and champagne); nevertheless, I found myself becoming quite addicted to these little forays, and craving them every couple of days.

Each time I took a break from my practice and stepped outside my door, knowing exactly the goal in mind, I longed for that electrifying moment of being spotted, the feeling that some ferocious animal had me, amongst a crowd of thousands, within its sights; that he would soon be tearing at my clothes, wanting me with so much heated aggression, ripping at me, biting me, grunting and groaning, then collapsing at my feet alongside his Henry Poole cashmere suit crumpled on the floor. There was also that priceless look in his eyes as he handed me a ten-pound note, that glimmering of tender sadness and, dare I say, of love. Yes, I know it’s a
ridiculous thing to suggest, but I was truly convinced these men, even mildly, loved me.

I, however, didn’t love them at all. I found most of them quite repulsive (even if I was exceedingly choosy about the calibre of gentlemen I would yield to). But I loved the diversion they offered, what they did to me, and how adored they made me feel. And little came close to the joy of slapping one of their filthy notes on the counter at the Savoy, sending it on its merry way, ordering a gin martini and one of their finest cigars, and congratulating myself, all the while, on this thrilling lifestyle I’d constructed.

And in my state of post-coital and gin-infused bliss I became convinced that by liberating myself so effortlessly from all financial and sexual burdens, I’d enabled an even greater dedication to my musical practice. Yes, I honestly believed I was doing myself, and my music, the greatest service. Then, five days before the performance, everything suddenly changed.

It was late morning and I was in my room, sorting my laundry, and listening to two announcers on the wireless discussing the British Council’s role in Germany and the British scores now available to German orchestras. I was hardly paying any attention until one of the announcers spoke about the popularity of the British entertainers that the council had sponsored to tour Germany. ‘Absolutely,’ the other responded. ‘Noël Mewton-Wood’s already heading back for his second tour of the country this year, leaving, I believe, tomorrow.’

It was not—or so I told myself—that I now knew that Noël was not going to witness my debut at the Duke’s Hall. In fact, at first I felt a certain comfort that he wasn’t going to be there. But it was something else, something more—it was the sudden awareness of the futility of what I was doing. That I was forcing myself through such inordinate pain in order to play in a student hall with a student orchestra—I almost laughed as I imagined the programme:
The Royal Academy of Music Senior Orchestra performing at the Duke’s Hall, Marylebone Road—
and while Noël toured Germany. He’d be playing to audiences in Frankfurt and Hamburg, and I, at twenty-one years of age, would be at the Duke’s Hall of all places—the highpoint of my career! Thank Christ he wasn’t going to be here to witness it, I thought.

I poured myself a drink then sat down and composed a letter to Anton, saying that I’d decided to leave the Academy and would he please be so kind as to inform my understudy that he would be performing the concerto. I was not in the least undecided, and not at all disappointed; in fact, I was so unwavering that there really was no reason to discuss my decision. Then I thanked Anton for his tireless support over the years and wished him all the best in the future with his flock of other aspiring pianists.

I walked about my room, quite bewildered at first, unsure how to comprehend all that had appeared to me, all that I was about to do. But as I mused over this revelation I began to feel almost ecstatic—what
extraordinary clarity I now had, I thought. It didn’t even cross my mind what I’d do with myself that afternoon, the following day, week, year, or for the rest of my life. All I felt was an overwhelming relief.

I delivered the letter to the staffroom that afternoon and continued on to the administration building where I filled in the necessary forms to remove myself from the student register. I then, predictably, headed off on one of my debauched little jaunts.

I greatly appreciated that Anton never rang. And frankly, thinking about it now, I’m not at all surprised.

The evening of the performance at the Duke’s Hall I had a wonderful night. I sat in my room with a bottle of gin, listening to my Schnabel recording of the C minor concerto, overwhelmed by its stunning beauty, and reassured by the knowledge that I would never have been able to play it so well, and that such a piece ought to be left in the hands of the masters, those who allowed humble music-lovers like myself to best enjoy the music. As I listened I kept thinking how pleased I was that, despite all that had passed, I was still able to enjoy this concerto so much. In fact, without the anxiety of having to perform to some inconsequential crowd, I found the concerto more beautiful and moving—yes, far more moving, in fact—than ever before.

Nowadays I still feel quite nonplussed, remembering leaving the Academy—that I could suddenly throw everything away like that. I don’t lie when I say it really
seemed to mean little to me at the time. I’m not sure whether this was simply because I was so rotten drunk every night, my head awash with the clammy, strained faces of so many anonymous men, or whether it was something else. That, somewhere deep within, I knew I didn’t have what it took. To be a virtuoso. To be great.

Yes, that is what I’d discovered through all of this (my wonderful secret had at long last been revealed!): I possessed not an ounce of greatness at all, but rather a hideous ordinariness, at the very best. I suppose I ought to have been more upset than I was as this realisation emerged, but strangely I mainly felt a deep regret: I might have saved myself a lot of bother if I’d stumbled upon this knowledge earlier on.

I mean, I certainly had everything else required to become a virtuoso. Determination. By God, the determination! Just the other day the physiotherapist was giving me some arm stretches to practise (I’m finally getting on top of this damn problem, and even learning to write with my left hand). I asked the little badger of a man, ‘Shall I just do a few stretches each day?’ He raised an eyebrow and said, ‘Knowing you as I do, I’d recommend you do only ten, not one hundred and ten.’ My face heated up and I had to blink furiously—can you believe it?—to fight back the tears. (Why on earth do I just cry at the drop of a hat these days?) I realised there and then with what dogged determination I’ve pursued everything in my life—my father’s approval, Noël, my music; how I’ve fought, fought, fought. I ought to be proud of my
tenacity, I know. But for some reason it just made me want to cry.

And love. Yes, my love for music could never be questioned. It really was everything to me, it always had been, even when I was a small child. I remember my first piano teacher, a wonderful woman called Miss Andersen. She lived on her own around the corner from us, though I never saw her outside. It seemed her existence terminated at the walls of her apartment, and within this cocoon, which she always managed to keep warm even when snow was piling up outside the windows, she’d float about in chiffon dresses and fur stoles. I could barely wait for Wednesdays to come around, when I could elope to this magical land and see my queen.

I was Miss Andersen’s first pupil for the day and often she’d be playing the piano when I arrived. I’d hear music tumbling out through the walls and windows onto the street and I’d perch under the petunias on the sill and listen, imagining this quiet, elegant lady in her floral dress, poring over the keys like a swan gazing into the water. I would wait until the very last moment I could, until it might seem that I was late, then I would lightly knock, half hoping she wouldn’t hear, bracing myself for that abrupt silence, like a flower being ripped from the ground. There’d be a velvety flurry and then she’d open the door, gloriously flustered. I wanted to tell her I’d been listening for ten minutes, that more than anything I’d like to sit next to her on the stool while she played.
But I was always too embarrassed to ask, so I’d just smile and tell her that I’d only just arrived, settle myself at the piano and pull out my Czerny or Clementi, hand her my exercise book, then sit up straight and wait to begin my scales.