at his watch.
She is surprised. “You don’t want me to start at the beginning?”
“Not necessary.”
The allegretto is a bitch to launch into without the first movement lead-in. If she’d known, she would have requested to begin with the more straightforward Italian piece. Maybe it’s not too late to change. She opens her mouth to protest, then sees two weary masks facing her. Last thing they need is a middle-aged woman who can’t make up her mind. What is she afraid of? Compared to the time she was robbed by a Bolivian taxi driver in 1985, this is nothing. Compared to clutching a bracken-hued Mike when he stopped breathing after kissing the neighbour’s cat, this is a walk in the park.
She lifts her right hand over the sound hole — and begins.
Jasper reaches Toby, who has finally consented to turn on his phone.
“You haven’t played yet?”
“I’m about to,” Toby says.
Jasper waits to hear more, but there is silence. He’s used to such pauses in his life with Toby but still can’t help charging in with: “Not too late to change your mind.”
More silence. Toby hangs up.
Room bloody C. Door’s locked, which is weird, and pressing his ear to the wood, Toby hears nothing at all. It’s well past noon, and the guy before him should be finishing his audition. Time to warm up but no place to do it except this bare hallway of the Nathan Gold Fine Arts Building. Should have stayed back in the dorm, soaked his hands in a sink of warm water. Instead he’s pacing the empty corridor, a strategic error. The call from home messed him up. Jasper can never hide the edge of worry in his voice.
He checks his schedule: the 12:30 slot is in the west wing. A diagram shows where that is. Take a left, down the hall, make a right turn and cross the overpass. He stares at the diagram. What overpass? He’s in the wrong bloody wing. There’s another room C. He grabs his guitar and darts off. Last thing he needs is to arrive at the session sweaty and out of breath. If Jasper were here, he would have scouted the location the night before. This insight doesn’t help.
He jogs down the corridor, makes a dash left, then right, then left again, heartbeat ramping up. Moments later he surfaces into the glass-enclosed overpass that joins the two wings of the building. In the parking lot beneath, cadets guard a pair of relic tanks. His guitar case kneecaps him, and he swears, then continues through the overheated bridge toward room C. In this newer wing the doors are cream-coloured with frosted windows and the hallway smells sweet, like French toast. Room C announces itself with a gold letter stamped above the window. Toby pauses to compose himself, tucks hair behind one ear, and waits until his breathing slows.
The door swings open, and they call him in at the same time as an Asian youth in a blazer scurries out, not meeting Toby’s eye. Two judges sit cross-legged on chairs and don’t look up right away, being busy writing notes. No window, just the hiss of underpowered ventilation. A piano bench is set next to a footstool — that’s it, no music stand. Competitors must play from memory.
Toby smiles fixedly as he enters, sets his case down, and flings it open, miming a confidence he doesn’t quite feel. This isn’t the time for lame jokes or false bonhomie. The hinge of the case catches on his forearm and leaves a tiny bite. It could have nicked a fingernail, which would have been disastrous. Sometimes it comes down to such small misadventure. He inhales the familiar intoxicating fragrance of his instrument’s wood and varnish.
“Make yourself comfortable,” commands Manuel Juerta, the noted Cuban guitarist, a chubby man with a shock of reddish hair. Castro lets him out of the country for recitals and conferences because he always returns with a sheaf of ecstatic reviews. The other judge is a couple of decades younger — Jon C. Smyth, a Brit of determinedly plain name and phenomenal technique, already chair of guitar studies at a major U.S. university. Juerta consults his clipboard as Toby settles on the upholstered bench, adjusting its height while the guitar seesaws across his lap.
“Mr. Hausner is from Toronto,” Juerta says, reading off his list as Toby tunes. “You’re not such a kid, yes?” he chortles, trying to lighten the mood.
Since Toby’s hairline started to recede, he looks at least thirty. The room is airless and rank with the nervous sweat of earlier contestants. The judges have been at it for a day and a half, and they’re waiting to be astonished. This is what Toby tells himself as he cranks up the footstool to its highest position. He likes the fretboard to skirt his left ear. In his view there can never be a bench too low or a footstool too high.
First up is the Fandanguillo, a wicked piece full of tricky inversions and heroic leaps up the fretboard plus an endless barre-chord that leaves the wrist weeping. Toby visualizes the opening phrase, exactly where his fingers will plant.
The judges yawn and stretch and sip water from plastic bottles. At his age, Toby realizes, he could be sitting alongside them, presiding over the future of the next generation.
Juerta glances at the wall clock. “When you are ready.”
Toby figures they’ve heard the same three pieces so many times that they’re not sure whether to laugh or scream after encountering the full range of interpretations, too few offering glimmers of originality, let alone genius. He shuts his eyes, for music has a precise moment of entry: in his mind he hears the opening measures played sublimely, a perfect wave he must catch just as it begins to curl. How do you know if you are playing well? Only by listening, and Toby does nothing but listen. He could hear a mouse gnaw a piano string two studios away.
He begins, evoking the sound of Andalusian streets and baked land — no, nothing so literal, for music creates its own form. He dampens notes to avoid harmonics that might bleed into the next chord. Phrasing and breathing are inseparable, for without phrasing there is no life in the music, just a parade of notes, and without breath, well, we all know where that leads.
Toby glances at the judges as he finishes the piece with a long ritardando. They sit in identical postures, legs crossed, pads in hand, expressionless. No acknowledgement that he has just played his heart out.
Second piece is by a little-known Italian composer from the Romantic era. Musically second rate, but a technical obstacle course that makes it a competition favourite.
He announces its title in a hoarse voice.
The judges nod.
He wipes his hands on his trousered knees, takes his time. The mood will change drastically, and he must set it up. The first bar involves a series of quick chord changes, and a pratfall at the start is never good. He feels a whistle of panic, a sensation that is almost nostalgic: only performance creates this feeling that every second matters.
Opening line speeds by, though not without a slight drag in the bass, then suddenly he is creating music, not jumping hurdles — and he dares to relax a fraction.
Mistake: a performer should never feel safe. As if to demonstrate this truth, he fumbles a simple transition. The mishap catches him off guard, though Juerta, if he notices, doesn’t make a mark on his sheet. Smyth’s lips tighten.
Toby attacks the rest of the work to its edges, aggressive, proving he is in no way scared by his flub. Finishing, he wipes his forehead: one more piece, then it’s free choice, his beloved Sarabande.
But first the Mark Loesser modern work. The lattice of styles is incoherent to the uneducated ear, and he soon fills the studio with a crunch
