The Soloist (2 page)

That event—the discovery that I had a musical gift—had as profound an effect on my parents as it did on me. Originally they had planned to have more children, but in view of my gift my mother decided it would be best for her and my father to focus all of their attention and resources on me. They practically starved themselves to rent a piano and pay for lessons with the best teacher in the area. By the age of five I played well enough to give a recital, for which I was paid twenty-five dollars—my professional debut. It looked as if I was going to be a pianist, but then, at age six, my mother took me down to Manhattan to hear Janos Starker play the Haydn D-major concerto, and on the ride home I begged her to let me switch to the cello. The piano was a lovely instrument, but the cello sounded like a living, breathing animal with vocal cords made of amber. Five minutes into that concert I knew I had to sing through that animal’s voice.

I progressed with the cello so quickly and with such feverish
intensity that by the time I was nine there were no cellists left in our area qualified to teach me. My mother and I ended up moving to Germany so I could study with Johannes von Kempen, a brilliant cellist best known for his interpretation of German music, particularly Bach. My father stayed behind in Poughkeepsie—partly because he didn’t want to lose his pension and medical benefits by quitting his shipping clerk’s job, but also because he said he couldn’t live in Germany again—so for that period I saw him only when I traveled to the United States to give concerts and every winter when he would come to Europe and meet us in Switzerland for the holidays.

The hardest part about that move was being torn away from my friends in school. Up until that time I had led a fairly normal social life; few of the other children knew anything about classical music or were aware of the attention I was getting from adults for my playing, so although I was occasionally teased for not playing kickball or dodge ball (my mother had forbidden me to play any sports for fear that I might damage my fingers), I remember having a good time in school. Once we moved to Germany, however, I studied with a private tutor whose salary and living expenses were enthusiastically provided by a wealthy lover of music, and my playmates were all adult musicians. I spent most of my time with Maestro von Kempen, and he was almost ninety when I first met him. Once we moved to Germany my mother discouraged me from having any contact with children my own age, because she thought their immature games and interests might distract me from my studies.

Whenever I complained of loneliness my mother would tell me that God had given me a special gift, and as painful as it was for her to be so strict it would be unforgivable if she
allowed me to throw it away. She claimed that all of the sacrifices I was making as a child would be rewarded many times over when I was an adult, when, she assured me, everyone would want to play with me and be my friend. When I became a teenager and began to show an interest in girls, she told me to keep my mind on music, and guaranteed that if I followed her advice the day would come when the most beautiful and cultivated women in the world would line up at the chance to date me. I remember her once saying, when I was sixteen, “You’re young still—just a child! And your stock’s gonna keep going up, Renne, it will. Why cash it in too soon? You wait and see, you’ll thank me someday.”

My mother saw to it that I followed this advice whether I wanted to or not. When I was seventeen we traveled north to Sweden, where I had been invited to play the Lalo concerto with the Stockholm orchestra. During one of the rehearsal breaks the conductor’s daughter, a year older than I and herself a musician of some talent, invited me to have some coffee with her at a pastry shop just across the street. My mother had gone shopping during the rehearsal, so I figured it would be safe. Those thirty minutes were remarkable; even though we could barely communicate with each other I felt as if we had eloped, and my senses were as heightened as during a concert. I felt the snow collapse under each of my footsteps, I enjoyed my pastry as if it were the first time man had tasted fruit or custard, and every strand of her blond hair spread out against her camel-hair coat looked like spun gold. Deliriously happy, I asked if we could repeat our date the next day. She agreed, but I made the mistake that night of urging my mother a bit too strongly to go shopping again the next afternoon. She became suspicious and returned to the hall early, then panicked when she learned I was
not there. Thinking it would come as a relief to her, the conductor said that there was nothing to worry about, that I was with his daughter, but she did not welcome this news. As soon as I walked in the door she pulled me out of rehearsal, embarrassing me terribly, led me back to our hotel and made a frightful scene. She scolded me with uncharacteristic bitterness and told me never to try to deceive her again. In spite of my acute shame I managed to ask what was wrong with having coffee with the conductor’s daughter—what could happen, after all, during a thirty-minute rehearsal break in downtown Stockholm, a city we would be leaving in just two more days? My mother looked at me the way Caesar must have looked at Brutus, then her face went utterly blank. In a frozen voice she asked if this was how I was repaying her for all her years of sacrifice.

“Fine, then,” she said before I could answer. “You don’t need my advice anymore. You’re a famous musician now, a big shot, and I’m in the way. What do I know about anything? Who cares that I gave up having my own life, or other children, just to let you have this chance? Fine. You do what you want.” She actually started packing a suitcase. Her reaction terrified me; even at that age I didn’t have any experience with independence and my will to defy her collapsed immediately. Only after I had tearfully apologized and promised at least two dozen times never to see the girl again did she finally soften and agree to stay with me for the rest of the tour.

By this time I had traveled all over the world, had played with some of the finest orchestras in Europe and America, had made several recordings and was treated like royalty wherever I went. Musically speaking, that early part of my life did appear to be charmed; onstage or off, I honestly felt that I couldn’t hit a wrong note even if I tried. I remember once
thinking during my accompanist’s solo that if I were to lift my cello by the neck and break it over his head, the thud would have been in the key of our piece. I played without any fear or self-consciousness at all; I had received such unreserved praise and attention, and from such an early age, that it never occurred to me to question my abilities. And I loved performing.

Yet I was not satisfied. After every concert, throngs of older people would crowd backstage to shake my hand or kiss my cheek, and with tears in their eyes they would say I was a miracle, a gift from God, and that they hoped to live long enough to hear me play as an adult. Music critics, music lovers, conductors, my teacher and, most of all, my mother joined this chorus, telling me over and over again that playing the way I did as a teenager meant that as long as I kept working hard adulthood would soon bestow upon me emotional qualities that would make me the premier cellist of my generation, if not the century. For this reason, and because I wanted so badly to choose my own friends and have a romantic life, I could hardly wait to get older.

My life changed course abruptly when I was eighteen. My mother and I had returned to Poughkeepsie by then; Professor von Kempen had had his final stroke and passed away the year before. At his memorial service I had not let myself cry; I believed that he would have wanted me to show restraint. Also, I hoped that if I acted like a grown man I would hasten the process of maturity that was going to make me a finished product, a master cellist rather than a child prodigy, the maestro’s true successor rather than his potential heir. I knew that he believed my success would restore validity to his life’s work. Less than a year later, however, while preparing for a
concert tour through South America, I started to notice what appeared to be a hearing problem that affected my sense of pitch. I made it through that tour but with great difficulty, and for the first time in my life I received mixed reviews. Within a few months the problem became so acute that I could barely play at all.

My natural gift for intonation turned against me. My ear began to examine each note so intensely that even a variation of a single cycle in pitch bothered me. Not even I could play with that kind of acoustic precision, which made it nearly impossible for me to concentrate on the melodic line, and as a result my playing became fragmented and weak. Concerts became interminable humiliations instead of being euphoric experiences for me.

Eventually I had to cancel all of my engagements, many of which had been organized years in advance. It was an enormous inconvenience for the halls and orchestras, and it put me in a terrible position. At an age when most young men and women feel their lives are just beginning, I felt mine had ended. I wanted to disappear completely, and for all practical purposes I did. I lived at home with my parents until I was twenty-four, practicing obsessively and thinking of nothing else but overcoming my musical problem. Having once been able to sing through that magnificent animal the cello, with all the power and freedom it gave me, I couldn’t imagine living without that ability.

I was terribly lonely, but I felt unwilling or unable to establish new relationships with anyone until my gift came back. To use my mother’s analogy, my stock had plummeted to such depths that I couldn’t possibly cash it in at such a loss; I was stuck. I didn’t feel like a real person during this period; I didn’t resemble the person I saw myself to be. I felt like a
ghost, or an image in a distorted mirror, and I didn’t know how to present myself to others. I yearned for an intimate relationship with someone, but felt especially self-conscious and disappointed with myself around women. The women I was attracted to, I assumed, would not want to associate with a failed musician.

Meanwhile, I had come to resent my mother for isolating me from other young people and for giving me such an exaggerated sense of entitlement. I also resented my father for letting my mother do it; once she had convinced herself that cultivating my talent was a religious duty, he had largely withdrawn from the issue of my upbringing. Living at home with them allowed me to practice with relatively few distractions, but eventually I became convinced that the only way I could find my voice again was by building a whole new life for myself, this time without anyone else telling me what to do. So I moved to Los Angeles, where the music department of a large university offered me an immediate appointment and the promise of a manageable teaching load.

For ten years very little happened to me. I hardly remember anything about this period, except how impatient I felt with many of the students, who seemed more interested in their social lives than in music. Even Bach, who was remembered by contemporaries as a man of nearly infinite patience and mild disposition, could lose his temper when confronted with musicians who didn’t practice enough. Once, while rehearsing a cantata, Bach listened in horror as the church organist lost his place during a simple passage. Enraged at this needless crime against music, Bach tore off his wig, threw it at the organist and shouted, “You ought to have been a cobbler!” Ours being a litigious society, I managed to refrain from throwing things at students, but if dreams came true
and university teachers had more control over students’ professional decisions, Southern California would have found itself overrun with cobblers by now.

I plodded forward with my job and my grueling daily practice routine until early last year, when my life changed direction once again. It started the weekend that Yo-Yo Ma visited our campus to give a master class, and after watching him do more in one afternoon to inspire my students than I had been able to do in the entire year, I came home to find a summons for jury duty in my mailbox.

Mr. Ma taught for over two hours that day, then surprised everyone by giving an impromptu performance for the students and faculty. His energy appeared to come from an inexhaustible source; his playing showed no signs of wear from all the teaching, and he didn’t seem worried about exhausting himself before the concert he was giving downtown the next evening. He answered questions afterward and proved to be an endearing and irrepressibly humorous speaker, which explained why I had heard laughter all afternoon coming from the practice room he used for his master class. I had been in my office down the hall in case they needed someone to quickly locate or photocopy any music during the lesson.

After this, the chairman suggested that we all move over to the Faculty Lounge for drinks, where we had to split up into several tables. I felt sorry for Yo-Yo, having to entertain the faculty after spending three long hours with our students—I don’t know if anyone even asked if he would have preferred to go back to his hotel—so I sat with a group of students at the farthest table. I remember that the only part of being a concert musician that I disliked was the socializing
afterward. I loved making music onstage, but I hated having to sit through postconcert dinners with groups of people who wanted to know all about me, or who wanted to tell me all about themselves, and who inevitably seemed disappointed to find that I was not as fluent in conversation as I was in the language of music. I pleaded with my mother to decline those invitations, but she insisted that it was important for me to “mingle.” The truth, I realize now, is that the dinners and luncheons and teas were important for her, not for me. Since she couldn’t actually sit onstage with me during concerts, those social occasions were her only chance to get the attention she felt she deserved as my mother, since anyone wishing to speak to me had to meet with her approval first.