5: The Ride of the Valkyries
As always, he reached out and shut off the alarm clock just before it rang.
He was already a moment delayed. He had been trying to recover his dream from right before waking.
Right before he awoke, Masaru had been dreaming of playing Spring and Havoc. It had been going well. He hadn’t been playing onstage, but somewhere outdoors, where a strong spiritual energy was fueling his music and his passion.
But no matter how hard he grasped, he felt as though he were trying to catch a fish with his bare hands. Such is remembering a dream.
He gave up, stood, and drew back the curtains. The expanse of gray and blue scattered what was left of his dream, but he felt as though the crucial something from his dream—the feeling of playing well—was still left.
He stretched lightly and got ready to jog. When he got outside, the cool air greeted him; life in Yoshigaë had already become routine. He was always able to settle down where he was and feel as though he were on home turf. He is adaptable but not malleable: another one of his many contradictions, accepted and integrated into himself only as Masaru Carlos Levi Anatol could.
* * *
Masaru was the first contestant on the second day of the Second Round.
He didn’t concern himself over the order. He was just as happy to play first and watch others as he was to go last.
But it was true that he couldn’t help but think of the performances from the day before. There’s a big difference between hearing only your interpretation and hearing eight live interpretations the day before you are to give your own. Everyone had had their own interpretations, and all of them, in some form, had lodged themselves in his brain.
But the best he had heard so far remained that of his mentor Nathaniel Silverberg.
Masaru’s faith in Nathaniel was absolute. He encouraged Masaru to play as he truly wished to, not how he thought it would please, because he in turn had faith in Masaru’s intellect and intuition. He was awed by and grateful for his mentor’s faith. It was a faith that he would not be shaken by something so trivial as a competition.
On one hand, Nathaniel had drawn upon both his personal familiarity and friendship with Dadaïki Hishinuma and his deep knowledge of his musical style and idiosyncrasies. Understanding the composer himself, Nathaniel thought, was crucial to understanding the piece.
Nathaniel had outdone himself when he had introduced him to the composer himself at the opening party. Nathaniel knew he had a keen eye, especially for people’s character. He digested their expressions, their mannerisms, their tones. It was only a few minutes with Hishinuma, but those few minutes taught him more about the interpretation of the piece than any other single thing he had done.
This was the only piece every contestant (well, every contestant who made it this far) would play. It was a good way to judge contestants’ handling of modern repertoire as well as their score-reading—a point of especial concern when the “contemporary” repertoire could be as diverse as Ives, Shostakovich, Boulez, and Glass. It was also a good way to emphasize the competition’s essentially Japanese setting. More than anything, it was a simple, blunt tool for comparing one pianist to another.
Given all that, Masaru believed the piece was a crucial, but not the primary, point of the Second Round. He thought the piece was more subtractive than negative—that is, one only had to play the piece sufficiently well not to disqualify oneself and place it within a program that made sense; it would not be what allowed a contestant to move forward.
He jogged at an easy tempo and matched his breathing to his pace. He imagined the flow of his recital.
He liked strategizing. Back when he high-jumped, spying one another’s stretching and considering just how high to raise the pole was one of his favorite parts. But pushing strategizing above practicing was pointless; the solid foundation that practicing provided allowed recovery from the failure of one’s strategies.
Looking back, it might have been a good thing that he had been disqualified from the Osaka Competition. It allowed him to enter Yoshigaë as a relatively unknown quantity, a blank sheet.
Competitions were fun, and he did well under pressure. But he wasn’t one to enter as many competitions as possible and pad his résumé. Nathaniel seemed to think the same; they agreed that this should be the first of maybe two or three competitions in his career.
When he arrived back at the hotel, he was more out of breath than usual—had run faster than usual.
Maybe he was more nervous than he thought.
I still have a while to go, Masaru thought bitterly. He began to stretch.
My Spring and Havoc will be …
He closed his eyes and thought.
The first piece of the Second Round. The first piece in his East-West program. He imagined touching the keys.
Suddenly, a fragment of the morning’s dream flitted into his consciousness. He thought harder.
The sunlight pouring in between the gaps in the leaves. In this little grove is the world entire.
Masaru opened his eyes and looked out as though seeing the world for the first time.
The small park between the buildings. The chilly air, misty and not yet warmed by the still-weak sun. The orange horizon, textured somehow. Birds calling in the distance, cars rumbling somewhere unseen.
The world entire.
Holding his breath, he feels brisk movement somewhere. The wind, just about to blow. The trees, about to receive the light of the sun and show off their verdant glory.
He absorbed the energy of the world rising for a new day into his body.
He went inside and took a shower with scalding water. Onto his head and shoulders, pounding his back, down his legs.
The universe has a way of feeling itself.
Spring and Havoc. Onstage, I shall paint the beauty of that which fades.
So Masaru thought.
My music is not one that explains and argues, like Jennifer Chan’s. Mine depicts; mine breathes.
The piece was overall calm and remote. It didn’t use complicated phrases. It was frank and humble. But the world it contained—endless.
Such was its perfection: the music was inductive of the world. Not out of many, one, but—out of one, many.
Hishinuma of course did not write or explain this. But he showed an entire world vibrating and echoing in the notes, the phrases which seemed to climb and climb into nothingness. Hishinuma, he thought, was not the type to enjoy binaries and discretes and sets. He liked the continuous, the flowing, the infinite. That which explained and described was irritating and pointless and usually counterproductive: such was the Japanese aesthetic.
But he didn’t think he ought to play it in such a Japanese way either. More than anything, it should be the expansive cosmology of Kenji and Hishinuma.
But how to express it? he thought while eating breakfast. His strategy originally was simple. Don’t over-explain with sound—noise does no good to anyone. That was all. The trick was not to over-explain while overwhelming—overwhelming with the scale of the universe.
There must be a way around the contradiction, he thought. He read and played and read and played and then one day it had come to him.
He wouldn’t explain. He would make the audience feel.
Easier said than done, of course. But describing the feeling was one step closer. Finding the precise word for the effect—“fading”—happened later, a little late in the game for his comfort, but at least now he had it.
Now, how to express fading?
This too took some time, but he decided he would express fading in his cadenza. This was the only place, he thought, to capture it: everything fades out, and then the theme is restated simply, frankly, one more time, and then the piece ends.
Masaru has stared at the cadenza’s instructions more than he cared to admit.
Freely, while feeling the void.
Every note in the piece, he believed, was spent on making the listener feel the void. In the cadenza, he’d make them become the void, show them how it felt to fade into the void.
When Masaru realized how he would play the piece, he was overwhelmed: he felt as though it was the first time he had discovered something new in the world.
Thus my Spring and Havoc is complete, Masaru remembered thinking fondly. Now let’s go and play it.
And so the first and last time he would play the piece had arrived.
* * *
The second day of the Second Round. 10:30 A.M.: the first performance was about to begin. The hall was full. Many were standing. No one questioned that the Juilliard prince was about to enter.
Masaru acknowledged this fact without boasts or nerves. He knew he was a favorite, and a persona. He enjoyed this knowledge without thinking too hard on it—as any star must.
He also knew he was a star.
Now standing behind the stage door, he was meditating, warming up his concentration.
Where is Ajang sitting? Will she like my performance?
He had flinched when he heard what she had said about Jennifer Chan’s performance. He wondered now what she’d say about his performance; he was a little afraid, but he’d ask her afterward.
But we are Maestro Watanuki’s prized pupils. He taught us to love music. Our music could never be just an attraction, right?
Thus Masaru asked Aya, who was sitting out there somewhere.
Whom do I play for?
This question seemed to come to him as he sat backstage in every one of his recent performances.
For the audience? For himself? For the god of music?
He didn’t know. But he was sure about playing for someone—or “something.”
This was a competition, but it was also a solo recital. He couldn’t get over the fundamental silliness of comparing recitals.
For the next forty minutes, the audience, the stage, would be his. Everyone would listen to him, and look at him.
His heart fluttered at the thought. He thought of his classmate’s words from not so long ago.
—It must be nice to be a genius.
From others, he had heard, You’re a star, you have everything. At precollege and at Juilliard, he’d heard such phrases mixed in with awe, with envy, with disgust. Of course, all those people were talented in their own ways; technically, they were indistinguishable.
So what was he to say in those moments? “Not at all:” gently deflect the comment? “I have a long way to go:” act humble? “Thank you:” accept it?
None of them felt right.
People said many, many things. Certainly Masaru had caught their eye. God knows they all saw something.
But, at the end of the day, it was just a lot of talk by some other—not something he felt about himself. If there are things one doesn’t know, there are things only oneself knows.
So, Masaru’s usual strategy, in response to those comments, was just to lightly smile, not to respond at all. Pleasant without affirming or denying, devoid of judgment.
But Masaru has acknowledged that he has always been able to express himself at the piano with minimal difficulty. Even when playing children’s tunes with Aya, he had been able to capture the playfulness, even when he wasn’t hitting all the right notes.
When he started lessons, his technique grew quickly, almost as though he were just remembering something he’d learned long ago. He learned one skill after another, studied music of diverse origins, and picked up other instruments as though God willed it. He listened to so much music that his parents worried his intelligence would become too lopsided.
—Masaru, you’re a curious one, Nathaniel Silverberg once murmured. It’s not that you’re just great, or just a prodigy.
—Then what is it?
—It’s that you’ve always known music, somehow, Nathaniel said, shoulders hunched. There was a famous sculptor from Japan once. He made hundreds of Buddhas, each magnificent enough to be designated a landmark. And he carved incredibly fast. Without a second of doubt, he polished and shaved and chiseled and a statue emerged as easily as one could dig one out of sand. One day, someone asked him how he carved so quickly. And he answered that he wasn’t making anything. He was just finding the Buddha already encased in the stone.
—Masaru, Nathaniel had said, holding his shoulders. When I look at you, I think of that story. You’ve always known music. We are not teaching you music. We are just giving you the chisel and brush and hammer so that you can find the Buddha of music within yourself.
Masaru had been listening with a bewildered face. And Nathaniel, seeing his face, had smiled his happiest, most genuine smile. Looking back, it was the highest compliment he had ever paid Masaru. Just thinking of it now made his eyes mist, but he was so young it didn’t even register at the time.
What did register was Nathaniel’s smile. His quiet smile.
You don’t even know. And that’s OK. You will.
That’s what the smile seemed to suggest.
Of course, he didn’t think he’d reached his final form already. He still needed polishing. There were many areas to be trained and deepened, and he expected never to be satisfied by his own musicianship.
But what I have to do now, I know I can do. Those things which I cannot yet do, I am not yet permitted to do. By the world, and by the gods.
It was a prideful thought to have. But this too came naturally to Masaru: he was an honest critic, most especially of himself.
The one thing Masaru could never understand was that others did not feel as he did. I’m worried I can’t memorize it, I’m worried I’ll have a memory slip during my performance, I’m worried I’ll mess up—such anxieties were entirely foreign to him. He’s always felt that there was a task to be executed, nothing more. If that might be called talent, so be it.
* * *
Stage Manager Dakubo cast a warm smile in Masaru’s direction. In the great halls of the world are great stage managers; their names are famous among musicians. There are stories that just their smiling faces can put agitated musicians at ease.
Masaru understood the feeling for the first time. Warm and relaxed, genuinely empathetic toward musicians, faithful to them, supportive of them, expressing no limit to his service to them.
Good stage managers make musicians feel lucky.
Masaru felt invigorated—and lucky. To be in a great hall, under the watch of a great stage manager, playing great music.
“It’s time,” he nodded. Masaru nodded back. “Best of luck.”
He said the same thing before the First Round.
Masaru smiled as he entered today’s stadium. The passionate applause wrapped around him as soon as he stepped into view. An audience’s anticipatory energy always fuels him.
Let’s get started: Spring and Havoc.
Masaru’s Second Round began quietly. Aya and Kanadae sat purposefully in the very rear. They listened.
It’s quiet. It’s very quiet.
Aya watched the stage, bathed in light. She was perfectly still.
There was an aura.
Masaru seized the silence afforded to him, infused it with his energy and the audience’s, and pulled everyone into the world of his music.
This music gives as much as it is given. And Masaru gives it a great deal. Masaru lets it flow, lets it compel the rest of his program forward.
Aya awaited his cadenza. What would he do? She could already tell that his approach was different from anything she had heard the day before. It was yearning and natural; she felt goosebumps on her arms.
I see the dark. I see the void.
She faced Masaru; behind him were the endless stars speckled against the dark, dark void. Nowhere to lean, nowhere to hide.
How many worlds, how many lives has he already lived?
Aya was in awe. Countless stories, countless souls—all the experiences in Masaru’s life seemed to pour forth from his dark, delirious music.
An almost imagistic music. Nowadays it’s a phrase terribly worn, but Masaru made it palpable and fresh again. Each image was independent and comprehensible and compelling. Masaru’s voice was clear and earnest, and he was telling the most fundamental story of humanity: the founding myth.
His expression was Biblical. It was trim, direct, passionate without being sentimental, and deeply felt. It was mystical.
Such a sense of infinity, Aya realized, was Masaru’s greatest talent.
And my Spring and Havoc?
Very briefly, she thought.
Is my approach even sane? Was my teacher right when discouraging my impulsive approach? Will I ever reach Masaru’s sheer perfection?
It was the first time she had ever had such thoughts about someone’s music. Her heart dropped through her stomach.
* * *
The great cadenza.
Nathaniel felt himself tensing. Masaru would show something of himself for the first time in the piece here. And show something hidden within the piece as well.
The cadenza, woven from long octave passages and complex harmonies. When Nathaniel first read it, he was actually a little disappointed in Masaru. He didn’t think he was one to awe the audience with a few flashy jumps and big sounds. But Masaru had politely countered, No, Maestro, I’ll make it a seamless part of the piece. The people won’t even register that they’re hearing something difficult. In the end, Nathaniel let up, only because he believed Masaru would actually disobey him if he didn’t.
And good thing he did. This pupil, who evolved on a daily basis, was growing faster still during this competition. Even the interpretation which he had heard a week before was nothing compared to this.
Another of Masaru’s (many, many) talents was an endless sense of potential. He knew no limits. He didn’t understand the concept. Every obstacle became a stepping stone and launchpad into his next form.
Nathaniel felt proud, and humbled. It’s oft said that pupils can’t choose their mentors, but that’s not at all true. It’s what pupils say when their own talents are mediocre. When there is talent, it is the pupil who chooses the mentor.
It wasn’t just pride—of course Masaru’s talent and musicianship were otherworldly, but that wasn’t because he himself was a good mentor. It was that he happened to be a good mentor to students named Masaru Carlos Levi Anatol.
This fact, surely both realized from virtually their first meeting. Masaru chose Nathaniel: This man will improve me. He knew, even back then. And Nathaniel knew: if he gave this boy everything, that boy would never disappoint him. He knew that this boy would unflinchingly use him as a launchpad as well—and that is what a teacher most deeply desires. It’s a teacher’s best and saddest outcome.
Of course, plenty of pianists take no pupils, or jut have no talent for teaching, and still go down in history as legends. Their best pedagogy, their music, speaks for itself.
But so long as one commits to taking pupils and raising them, one must have something to show for it. The musicality of one’s pupils speaks to one’s own musicality.
Nathaniel wanted to show Masaru’s music to Hoffman. Look, Maestro. I found one.
Or he found me.
* * *
This cadenza’s incredible.
Aya felt goosebumps again.
A strain of light through the darkness. And within that light, a prism of color and possibility.
Beyond the darkness, beyond the yearning, a whole world.
While reaching for the world, something caught Aya’s attention: Masaru’s technique.
The guts you need to play this, gosh. I don’t know if it’s the tromboning or the high-jumping or what I need to do to be able to play this, but …
Young classical pianists have very little experience with improvising, a fact which manifests in their music as embarrassment or nervousness. Beyond the comfort object of the score, they are unmoored in open waters; their cadenzas are limp and unsure of themselves. The pyrotechnics go off, but they too are underwater: their effect is little more than a ripple.
Masaru was not like that all. He was ready to fight and conquer his own music. He was a born musician.
Aya thought she saw Maestro Watanuki hovering in the periphery.
Maestro, he’s really something.
The strain of light that had shone through the cadenza quietly dimmed.
* * *
As Spring and Havoc died away, Rachmaninoff’s Étude-Tableau in A Minor, op. 39 no. 6, growled to life as though they were conjoined, attacca.
An evil, churning being rising from its slumber in the seabed of darkness.
A head slowly rearing; tremolos taut as piano wire cut through the darkness.
The program’s structure is perfect, Kanadae thought. It’s like some picture book’s scenes, and we’re just turning the pages.
With fast passages, Masaru showed off some of his atmospherics. The unyielding darkness of the first piece slowly fades in the second—still pre-dawn, but improving.
And then, with the third étude—Debussy’s Pour les Octaves—Masaru thrust the audience into the open. The about-face in Masaru’s program coupled with Debussy’s unique breadth came together into something strangely moving. Kanadae felt short of breath, or as though she might cry.
One last shift into Brahms’s Paganini Variations. The theme states itself inarguably: atten-tion!
In no aspect is his technique in any way deficient. And yet his music is still casual, even cheeky.
Kanadae was speechless. The confidence, the ease. The sheer fun.
Could music this hard be this beautiful. A heavenly talent indeed.
The audience could not dare compare it to anything else they’d ever heard.
It’s hard to sustain anticipation in a long set of variations; many of the best are secretly sonatas under the hood. The best strategy is to ratchet up the tension with every variation, but this often unintentionally puts listeners on edge and wears them out before the climax.
Rachmaninoff himself is said to have played only excerpts from the Paganini Variations, not for any lack of technical skill, but out of consideration for his audience.
Of course, the variation form lends itself to sustained interest—now you hear me, now you don’t—but when playing it, another set of challenges presents itself. Presenting the same theme, repeated twenty or thirty times, in a new, interesting way—every time—is impossible in its own way. One must weigh and balance and perfect the drama throughout.
Masaru was an entertainer—in the best sense of the word. His drama kept things interesting in just the right ways for the audience to want to hear the next note, and the next, and the next. He was an entertainer who is loyal first to the music, and then to himself.
His music was full of flair and charm, but there was an edge to it. It was this edge, this bitter wryness, which drove these variations.
His charm was boundless.
Kanadae tried and tried to analyze his music, but, in the end, like all the other audience members, she gave up and let his majesty wash over her.
* * *
Variations are fun.
It gives you a sense of being a jazz musician or a transcriber. With four bars and a theme, anything is possible.
Whenever Masaru played these variations, he imagined riding a canoe down a large river.
The canoe proceeds smoothly; a pleasant wind brushes his cheeks and cools his back.
He pushes powerfully toward the mouth of the river. With each passing moment, the scene changes, and he moves ever forward. The canoe eventually reaches the mouth, and the ocean opens before him.
Don’t rush. In rhythm, with full strokes, and without hesitation.
He pressed down his eager heart and ignored the hurtle toward the climax. He once read that excitement and coldness, perfectly balanced, produced ecstasy. In this case, he believed it.
Soon.
Soon, I’ll be at the ocean.
A scene I’ve never seen before. The open expanse, awaiting me.
Masaru felt a tingle riding up his back as he played.
Yes, this is what I’ve been looking for. I’ve been playing—so I could see this ocean.
It was the first time he had ever believed his answer to that question.
Masaru finished the four pieces of his Second Round recital and smiled as he received the havoc of applause from the audience. He visualized himself standing onstage; he looked down at himself from above.