The Virtuoso (11 page)

On the eighth of September 1944 the first of over five hundred v2 rockets hit London. It landed early on a Tuesday morning on Haveley Road in the London suburb of Chiswick, five minutes after its lift-off near the Hague.

I’ve often tried to visualise von Braun’s gleaming 18,000-pound creation preparing for lift-off, a symphonic machination of fuels and pressurised gases surging around pistons, turbines and pumps:
a high-pressure inferno of 2500 degrees Celsius. When the rocket launches it blasts fifty miles up into the sky, and across a 200-mile range. After only thirty seconds it reaches the speed of sound; after another thirty the engine cuts out and the rocket hurtles towards its target like a meteorite, at three times the speed of sound, approaching in complete silence.

In light of the terror that had reigned over London in previous months from the v1 ‘flying bomb’ attacks (I remember staring up at those pilotless planes with their cargo of bombs, listening to that deathly rattle as they motored along in the sky, and waiting for that mortifying silence when the fuel cut out, watching them tumble down through the air like birds shot from the sky), British authorities decided against using air-raid sirens to warn people of an approaching v2. The phenomenal speed and malefic soundlessness with which the rockets travelled rendered any warning futile. And so these massive weapons rained down silently on London, killing almost three thousand people. Occasionally I would catch a glimpse of one, like a giant telegraph pole streaking across the sky. But those being hit would never see a thing, they had no idea—as they took the roast from the oven, shopped at Woolworths, or, as I’d so often pictured my father, simply boarded a bus—that von Braun’s most brilliant work of art was careering towards them. The only warning they would get, a split-second before their obliteration, would be the mysterious sound of a whip cracking—the blast wave created by
the rocket, bouncing off the point of impact—accompanied by white flashes of light leaping across the sky. This would be immediately followed by the impact, a thunderous explosion that could often be heard across the entire city.

Shortly after the blast, as the dust and debris is already beginning to settle over the still, annihilated landscape, the sound catches up with the rocket. But, of course, there is rarely anyone alive in the vicinity of the ten-foot crater to hear this ghostly approach. At first there is the whine and rush of whistling air. This grows into a deafening roar, which soon tapers off into silence.

I didn’t ring Noël; that was not unusual. It was implicit in our relationship from the beginning that he would ring or call upon me. He was forever busy with musical and social engagements, and I was always willing to see him. Up until then the arrangement had worked well.

I tried, unsuccessfully, not to wait for his call; not to lie on my bed fully dressed, staring at the reflection off my shoes, fingers entwined over my belly, thumbs rotating about each other, listening for the sound of the telephone ringing downstairs in Ma O’Grady’s room and her slow tread up the stairs to my door. But as I lay there I’d grow even more despondent, reminding myself that Schumann, when separated from his love, had thrown himself into his music, composing some of
the greatest piano works ever written, and yet faced with the same predicament all I could do was mope around on the bed.

I imagined Noël’s reasons for not ringing: his mother had been unwell, he’d been in Wales recording for the BBC, he was working on a composition that required all of his attention—he hadn’t even been aware of the days, weeks,
months
that had passed. I wouldn’t ask about his mother, about the recordings, the composition; I would demonstrate how well I had survived without him, with a graceful aloofness. He’d be chattering nervously and I’d be looking at him with a distant curiosity as if he were someone I hardly knew.

When I did venture out for the day, to the Academy or a daytime concert, I’d often be struck by a sense of urgency, as if I’d suddenly remembered that I’d left the gas on in my room, or that an essay was due to be handed in that day. I couldn’t think of anything I’d neglected or forgotten and could only attribute this feeling to the thought that Noël was trying to contact me. I’d run home and, upon finding my door empty of messages, collect a pile of shirts (mostly clean) and take them down to Ma O’Grady to be laundered, chatting with her as long as possible—asking if she’d heard from her sister who worked as a missionary in Ceylon, or if the improvement in the weather had done anything for her husband’s chronic cough—hoping that during our conversation it would dawn upon her that she had taken a call for me in the morning from a
most polite young man,
a real gentleman, he was
, and that he’d requested I ring back immediately.

As I lingered at her door her cheeks would grow more plump and shiny, her stories more labyrinthine, and I’d realise I didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. I’d be standing there, nodding thoughtfully, catching myself peering through her wispy ashen hair to her boiled-egg scalp, all the while growing increasingly irritated with her. At that moment she seemed the only thing standing between Noël and me, and her raw-potato smell, her lard-smeared apron, would begin to appal me. But I’d remain, smiling pleasantly, trying to tease out the recollection with my geniality, convinced that my kindliness—who else cared that she spent the day running about for her invalid husband?—would somehow be remunerated with a message of a telephone call from Noël.

After a while I began to find comfort in playing the piano; I’d stay home all day practising, telling myself that Noël would arrive at the precise moment when I was suitably ready to charm him with my performance. He’d be summoned by the aching melodies of Chopin with their willowy arpeggios and wrenching chords. Struck upright, in the middle of his own practice, he’d be overcome by the desire to see me. This conviction enabled me to sit at the piano all day, untroubled by hunger, propelled by the belief I had in my own musical powers.

I tended to my devotion quietly; it was a small but steady flame that flickered soundlessly, ever ready to ignite into a blaze. I listened to stories on the radio of
war widows who worked all day in factories without complaint to support children they rarely saw. Their nobility and humility impressed me, and as I sat at the piano to practise through the evening it would occur to me that my consuming musical endeavours were my own silent sacrifice, an integral part of the whole affair. It wasn’t long before Anton mentioned that I was playing with more life—
Con gusto!
It was not just my practice, though, that improved at this time; I also threw myself into other subjects, especially musical history, staying up late into the night reading my father’s books, trying to increase my understanding of the composers and what lay at the source of the heavenly sounds they created.

It was during this time that I wrote a biographical essay for the Academy on Tchaikovsky that caused such a stir that I was called to the Dean’s office to explain myself, and asked why I was wasting the time of the Academy staff with such vile innuendo about Tchaikovsky’s music being an expression of his repressed homosexuality. (This same essay, incidentally, was one of the first I later had published overseas, virtually word for word, in the
Musical Quarterly.
) I wasn’t able to respond with any good reason and hadn’t even been aware that my teachers might read the essay in such a way. I stood there in front of the Dean’s large oak desk, apologising and staring into his ruddy face with its full white beard and receding quiff, thinking I’d never before noticed how much the man looked like
Brahms. The Dean leaned back in his chair, shook his head once more and sent me out with a warning.

I’m not sure when my interest in Tchaikovsky began, but he was the composer of whom I most thought whenever I worried that my crippling anxiety and lack of showmanship and charm would prevent me from being a musician of any significance. Tchaikovsky was often accused of being a wimp, a hypochondriac and a madman; he was also as susceptible and excitable as a child. But when he composed music, the millions of minuscule antennae that covered his being, making living so torturously difficult, would coalesce and, like a tuning fork, transform those terrifying vibrations into the most superlative sound.

As I worked on my essay, sometimes until dawn with the sun peeping gingerly through the window, I’d think about Tchaikovsky, who laboured over his G minor symphony, his first major composition, day and night, inducing insomnia and headaches, drinking heavily and driving himself into a state of near-collapse. His inspired melodies were reluctant creatures to which he was giving birth.

What intrigued me most about Tchaikovsky, however, was the connection between his creative output and his romantic life. It seems that so many of the major composers endured a year of great personal crisis that affected the development of their music. For Beethoven it was when encroaching deafness nearly drove him to suicide; for Wagner it was when the Dresden Revolution forced him to rethink his political
convictions. (Naturally, this discovery had me welling, once again, with thoughts of my own creative possibilities—would this be the year in which my musical brilliance would begin to reveal itself to the world?) For Tchaikovsky it was the consequence of an extraordinary decision he made in 1877, at a time when he was finally starting to enjoy some public success. He’d just finished work on his ballet
Swan Lake
and returned from a visit to the Bayreuth festival, Nuremberg and Vienna; then, after staying at his sister’s house in the Russian countryside, where he was so touched by the warmth and intimacy of her household—in such stark contrast to his own solitary existence—he returned home and decided he would marry.

For a 36-year-old bachelor such a resolution mightn’t seem unusual at all, except for the fact that Tchaikovsky had never so much as glanced at a woman and was quite undoubtedly
hermo sumi obrepens.
Now I can’t claim that the thought of marriage had never crossed my own mind. Marriage did often appear to solve myriad problems for gentlemen like Tchaikovsky and, if I may be so bold to include myself in the same sentence, myself also—the main problem being the curse of desperate loneliness. I’d often thought what a thrill it would be to lie in bed and have another heartbeat galloping alongside my own, to have someone who knew how much milk I liked in my tea, who grew concerned when I was even moments late home from work. Unfortunately most women I met, though capable of fulfilling these functions, I found either tediously dizzy or terrifyingly
overbearing. But Tchaikovsky was after more than another being with whom he could share his meals and his thoughts; Tchaikovsky wanted to silence the malicious whisperings of his society and, more than that, to curb what he called his ‘natural inclinations’, which he blamed as being the greatest obstacle to his happiness. Convinced that people despised him for his vices, he declared to his brother Modest that he would make a serious effort to marry, legally, anybody, and that if he was not brave enough for that, then he would, at any rate, conquer his old habits once and for all.

Whenever I’d thought about
giving up
Noël I’d acknowledge that I might be able to stop attending his concerts for a while, but I knew, deep down, it would be impossible to sit at the piano and play a piece of music without thinking that it was he for whom I was performing. But didn’t everyone have such a figure? Someone to whom they dedicated everything they did?

Tchaikovsky, however, went ahead with his harebrained idea, and married Antonina Milyukova, a young student of his who’d threatened to end her life if she had to go on without him (I’m sure that this sense of melodrama was partially what drew him in). As anyone could have foreseen, as soon as the train carrying the honeymooners pulled out from Moscow Station, the composer fell into a deep depression and state of panic, suddenly certain that the finest part of his being—music—had died forever.

Soon after the newlyweds returned to Moscow, Tchaikovsky fled from his marital apartment to his
sister’s place and worked on what were to be two of his greatest works:
Eugene Onegin
as well as his Fourth symphony, and it seemed that in composing, he was able to claw his way back to sanity. But as soon as he returned to his wife and his Moscow flat, his feeling of desperation returned, and it wasn’t long before he waded fully clothed, up to his waist into the ice-covered waters of the Moskva River, in the hope that he would catch pneumonia and die.

In my essay for the Academy I wrote much about Tchaikovsky’s twelve-week marriage with Antonina Milyukova. I was fascinated by the way he continually brought himself back from the edge of madness through his feverish outpourings, and that even though he went on to live alone and in fear of being caught in the midst of a clandestine affair, he survived by escaping into his music: dedications to some impossible love, works so amorous that they teetered on the edge of hysteria.

I listened to Tchaikovsky’s First piano concerto each evening, imagining myself performing it for Noël, as he had performed it for me at the Albert Hall in the early years of the war. As the hissing crackle of the disc began I’d sit at the piano looking down at the keys, so quiet and lifeless. Silence echoed about the room, my hands trembling as I anticipated the quiver and fall of the baton.

During the horn introduction and the orchestra modulation up to D flat, I’d lift my hands to the piano, and a feeling of tremendous vulnerability would sweep
over me, as though my flesh were falling from my bones. Then I’d launch onto the keys—a thunderous sound crashing out from the wood, a colossal steamship pounding through the tumescent waves of the orchestra.

Afterwards, in the silence that followed the final chord, I’d see Tchaikovsky sitting alone at his desk at night in his dim Moscow flat, in front of him a glass of vodka, a gas lamp, an abandoned game of solitaire, and page after page of the most fiercely romantic orchestration. Music in which he evaded the realities of his life. But as any rationally minded person knows, one can only escape one’s life to a point, and for so long. For men like Tchaikovsky life will always fall short of the perfected beauty they are able to compose in their minds. And I realise it is easy enough to say this with full knowledge of the desperate act he was to commit eighteen years later. But you do only have to listen to the man’s music, full of so much longing, so much desperate desire for love, to hear the whisperings of his final lethal escape, singing out loud and clear.