The Concert Pianist (8 page)

‘I'm interested in artists,' he announced, ‘not record companies. Recordings, not labels. Music heritage, not marketing. My mission will never be corporate. I aim rather higher, or so I like to think.'

John and Ursula came nervously to the edge of their seats, as if in support of their patron's candour.

‘ I want to make possible things that are not possible for conventional record companies.'

This was his rallying call. This was why they were all here.

‘Forget the balance sheet.'

Philip was unblinking.

John nodded wisely.

‘You see' - Bulmanion cleared his throat oratorically - ‘so many of the great artists have been underserved by the record biz.'

He had the gravelly voice of a boardroom conquistador, the vowels of a football-club owner. His authority in the realm of classical music was utterly incongruous.

‘You, for example.' His gaze was unflinching.

Philip was unsettled. ‘I haven't been underserved!'

‘ I would say that you have.'

John leaned forward. ‘Frank isn't . . .'

‘I've done OK.'

‘Yes, of . . .'

‘Grand Prix du Disc. Diapason d'Or.'

‘Very good.'

‘Gramophone Record of the Year.'

‘A magnificent recording!'

Bulmanion nodded emphatically.

Philip stared back at him.

‘What are you trying to tell me?'

‘
Given your stature, you've been undermarketed, badly positioned, under-released.'

Philip regarded his host irritably. ‘I've been bloody difficult!'

‘You're entitled to be bloody difficult.'

‘Am I, indeed?'

Bulmanion calmly smiled.

John leaned into the conversation. Frank was clearly inexperienced at dealing with artists and somewhat socially abrupt. His own legendary emollience was in order. ‘Frank has spotted something key. You hate recording, but whenever you go into the studio the results are marvellous. You're brilliant in spite of yourself. The problem is that without forward-planning those recordings are a series of one-offs. The repertoire is fragmented, the portrait of an artist incomplete. Frank's idea is to provide the most flexible partnership fully responsive to your creative impulses so that, in a completely spontaneous way, you can do yourself justice and your recordings can do you justice.' He smiled definitively.

Philip glanced sharply at Ursula. She reciprocated his glance. Her expression was one of humble complicity with whatever he chose to say.

He stared them both down. ‘I have never done myself justice. That is the condition of my life. Make of it what you will.'

‘You could record whatever you liked, whenever you liked.'

John was direct. ‘How many record companies would offer that?'

Philip could not believe he had to go through this meeting for the sake of a deal he would never sign on the eve of a concert he was determined to cancel. He was annoyed about everything now.

‘Very flattering,' he said voicelessly.

‘I'm not trying to flatter you.' Bulmanion was level. ‘I'm trying to register my commitment.'

‘Yes.' He felt like a different person today. ‘Probably I'm not ready.'

John laughed uneasily and swapped looks with Frank.

The businessman remained calm. ‘The frequency of releases would be dictated by your timetable, your musical agenda.'

‘I mightn't be ready for years.'

‘Come on, Philip!' John was suddenly exasperated.

‘That would be a loss,' said Bulmanion flatly.

‘Not in my opinion.'

‘
Art is long and life is short,' said Frank.

‘Art is bloody difficult.'

‘You're at a vintage period in your life as a pianist. Maturity, vision . . .'

‘I'll be the judge of that.'

Frank nodded, as if in acknowledgement of Philip's adverse temper. He could draw the meeting to a halt if he chose. As a rule, people were more in need of his money than he was of their goodwill.

‘I want to be responsible for moving you from the cult fringe to the canonical centre.'

John made no facial response, but did not demur, either. Only Ursula seemed uncomfortable on Philip's behalf. Her posture became more erect, as if in disdain of such terms.

‘Cult fringe,' said Philip ominously.

‘The reality of your position in posterity.'

This was too much. He had no need of such home truths today. Why was he here? ‘Oh, I see. You can do that, can you? De-cult-fringe me?'

‘With your help.'

‘What Frank means is that you're not a corporate pianist,' said John tensely.

‘Well, thank you very much!'

His agent looked darkly into his palms. He had not anticipated this kind of prickliness. He offered Philip an expression of unsmiling seriousness so as to leave him in no doubt of the critical importance of the meeting.

‘Listen,' said Bulmanion judicially. He halted for a moment. He knew his mind and wanted others to know it, but as Philip later realised this was not the egotism of power so much as the unvarnished manner of a man who never expected to be liked for himself. He spoke at length, not to proselytise, but to expand an understanding. He did not trouble to ‘sell' his ideas because he perceived them as facts.

‘You're an artist. Your whole life is music. That's as it should be. What you don't see is the slowly turning wheel of musical fashion. We see it, or think we do, because it's a function of our perspective. Modern marketing. An oscillation between style and substance. Classical-music recording is one of the few areas where you can't
fake
it. The diametric opposite of pop - where you absolutely must. The listener is so sophisticated, the product so incorruptible that style can never triumph over substance. Even so, audiences crave contemporary talent with something distinctive to offer, and that something is more often than not a kind of technical charisma. Awesome virtuosity has always been a calling card. You don't get in the door unless there's something sensational about the mechanism, some standout quality that tells the listener, “Wow! With this kind of equipment the unprecedented can happen.” So every few years there's a Kissin, or an Ivo Pogorelich, or some other whizz-kid. These guys get pulled to the fore and set in the limelight, and suddenly everyone else is made to look kind of “also ran”. The biz has to have tentpole newcomers. But they're rarely the best or the most enduring, and what we're now seeing is a thirst for true greatness as opposed to marketable panache. The mass-media culture is so junky and reprocessed there's an upsurge in the need for profundity.' He paused, enjoying this last phrase. ‘People want an older kind of pianist. Performances from artists who are miraculously untainted by the emotional shallowness of contemporary culture. It's a definite trend. And that's where you come in. Because you're in a line with the three great British pianists of the last century: Curzon, Solomon, and Hess. Music history is ready for you to take centre stage.'

Philip looked away in distaste. This was a perspective he found utterly trite.

Bulmanion was thoughtful. ‘The public domain has limited reputation-carrying space. It's like a highway, with only so many lanes, which is why in every branch of the arts there are great talents unjustly on the fringe, awaiting their moment of motorway access to the brand-name freeway. Then suddenly the time arrives when a talent can be slipped into the zeitgeist, because the opening is there, and the talent fits the opening.' Bulmanion regarded him with a profound expression. ‘Once on the freeway you have irreversible fame, an asset nobody can take from you, and the inherent value of what you do is disseminated to the widest audience. Philip, it's my perception that your time has truly come. I see it as my role to create that access.'

There was a moment of silence in which John waited respectfully and appreciatively, Ursula's melting gaze swung from Frank to
Philip,
and Philip sat inertly, hands clamped to the ends of his chair arms.

The comparison with Solomon he found suffocating, unbearable. He looked askance. He was not a pianist any more. That was the problem. He was a distressed fifty-two-year-old man with nothing in his life to cling on to. They might have been talking about someone else.

‘Maybe. . Ursula was hesitant. Her hands moved gracefully, as if to break in an idea before it was uttered. ‘I totally agree with what Frank says, but I think that maybe Philip is worried that we are trying to canonise - to use Frank's word - recordings that haven't earned their reputation yet. Which puts pressure on Philip.' She looked at Philip, collecting her thoughts. ‘I mean, Myra Hess didn't worry about ending up in the Great Pianist series every time she recorded a Beethoven piano sonata. If Frank is right, Philip will have a brilliant posterity on the strength of his occasional recordings, rather than absolutely everything he commits to disc under a new label . . .'

He stared at her. She was beautiful. She was articulate. It got worse and worse.

‘Correct,' said Bulmanion, adroitly incorporating Ursula at once, and suggesting a dialectical process of evaluation so conscientious that Philip did not need to think for himself. ‘My concern is to be on call when Philip is doing his best stuff. Retrospectively every pianist has a golden period. Look at Solomon in the early fifties. Richter in the sixties. Pollini in the seventies.'

‘Maybe I've had mine.'

‘I think you're there now.'

Philip's face creased up. This was too much. Their words were hurting him.

‘Is my view completely irrelevant?'

John tensed.

‘Of course not,' said Bulmanion more gently.

‘God,' Philip gasped. ‘I really admire people like you! You have to deal with hard cases like me.'

‘That's because there's more at stake than pretty conversation,' said the financier. ‘You have great talent.'

‘Philip!' said John breathily. ‘Frank wants to record the three concerts as the basis for a CD sequence on the great sonatas. I think
it's
a fantastic idea, nobody's ever done it before, a themed sonata series, mixed composers, mixed eras, with maybe a biennial concert series and a tour to drive the releases.'

‘One small problem,' said Philip, looking away.

‘What?'

‘I'm going to cancel the concerts.'

John's head turned slowly.

‘I don't think I can play next Wednesday.'

There was a silence, a snapshot of nothing.

‘We've got to talk.' He covered his face. ‘I'm going to have to cancel.'

Ursula's hand slid from her thigh on to the sofa cushion.

‘Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen.' Frank rose from his seat. ‘I'll be with you in a second.'

He pulled the door shut behind him. They heard him calling someone in the corridor.

John glanced over his shoulder at the door. Then he looked at Philip with an expression of needling incredulity.

Philip remained embedded in the armchair. His expression was frozen.

‘What's going on?'

‘I'm indisposed.'

‘You're not indisposed!'

‘Can't play.'

Ursula let out a deep breath, almost a gasp. ‘Has something happened?'

He could not answer this. He could hardly speak.

There was a peculiar silence, a stock-taking silence as John tensely figured his options and wondered how to proceed. He looked glassily at Philip, maintaining the pressure of his astonishment. Ursula glanced discreetly back and forth, panic in her eyes. Philip remained stubbornly haunted and fraught.

‘What d'you mean, “can't play”?'

‘I've been trying to tell you.'

‘So tell me now.'

He shook his head. He was suddenly unwilling to explain. He gazed off in the direction of the garden.

John pulled himself to his feet and passed slowly around the coffee table, hands in pockets. His face was distorted by the sense of
emergency.
He bit his underlip, eyes flickering uncertainly. Suddenly he spun round, almost like a sharp-shooter. His gaze was burning. ‘Hah!'

They both looked at him in surprise.

‘You're not . . .' He composed himself, tried to slow down, swallowed. ‘You're not upset by that silly monkey's arse of a review?'

He flinched.

‘Philip!'

He looked away, feeling foolish.

‘Is that what this is about! For God's sake, it's a wonderful recording! A magnificent recording! You can't let some idiot reviewer cramp your style.'

Ursula smiled anxiously.

‘Water off a duck's back, Pip. Come on!'

Ursula leaned forward, her hands clenched together. ‘Were you very upset?'

Philip looked at her, fed on her sympathy in spite of himself.

‘If every artist bunked off every time there was a duff review, we'd have no industry.' John hoiked his trousers. ‘I'd be flat out of a job. Those boys think they're God, but they're just two-bit hacks scratching a living.'

‘I've taken a wrong turn,' he gasped. His voice was thick. ‘Something's gone out of my playing.'

‘Oh, Phil! Which side of the frigging four-poster did you get out of?'

Philip shook his head.

John laughed nervously. ‘You pick your moments. Do us a favour.'

‘ I . . .'

‘Let's say for now you'll play those concerts. As soon as we're out of here, we'll go to a pub, have a drink and a chat. You've got worked up about something that doesn't matter.'

‘It matters to him, John.'

‘I can't play any more!'

John was super-tense. ‘I just need to end the meeting on a constructive note!'

‘I just need to end the meeting!'

‘Philip, Jesus! D'you really have to piss on his enthusiasm? This
guy
is total gold dust. Your fairy godmother disguised as a fat toad.' He smiled mock-manically.