Play for me.

 

     ‘Yes, I understand exactly where you are. It won’t be easy, but you can do it. Definitely, you can do it. Let’s start with the Britten. Play it again, just the first movement, and then we’ll talk. We can work through this together, a little at a time.’

     When he heard this, he felt an impulse just to pack away his instrument and leave. But then some other instinct — perhaps it was simply curiosity, perhaps something deeper — overcame his pride and compelled him to start playing again the piece she had requested. When after several bars she stopped him and began to talk, he again felt the urge to leave. He resolved, just out of politeness, to endure this uninvited tutorial for at most another five minutes. But he found himself staying a little longer, then longer again. He played some more, she talked again. Her words would always strike him initially as pretentious and far too abstract, but when he tried to accommodate their thrust into his playing, he was surprised by the effect. Before he realised, another hour had gone by.

     ‘I could suddenly see something,’ he explained to us. ‘A garden I’d not yet entered. There it was in the distance. There were things in the way. But for the first time, there it was. A garden I’d never seen before.’

     The sun had almost set when he finally left the hotel, crossed the piazza to the cafe tables, and allowed himself the luxury of an almond cake with whipped cream, his sense of elation barely contained.

 

KAZUO ISHIGURO, from “Cellists” from Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall  Knopf Canada, 2009.

To my careful instructors Fred Hammer and Kenneth Holland. In remembrance of my dad, Wally (on this, his birthday), who took me and sat outside the door listening to every lesson. And for Darrell, who plays and listens (and inspires) still.

Photo: Michael Baker