1. Instrumentalistes: Concerto helvétique en mi-majeur pour quatre mains et petit orchestre – anxieux, avec dix grammes de suspense, mais tout à fait charmant et pas du tout politique

The Swiss resort town of Braunwald has held a Music Week every year since 1936, an amateur affair. To get on the cultural map and draw more summer tourists, the Town Council voted to hold a piano competition as the highlight of the Week. Initially, it was to be called the Braunwald Piano Competition but then Frau Bock, the most punctilious member of the Council as well as the town’s official historian, pointed out that it is customary for such competitions to be named for distinguished musicians, such as the Cliburn, Chopin, and Tchaikovsky. She proposed that Braunwald’s be called the Gieseking because Walter Gieseking had held master classes in the town back in 1944. The proposal provoked some controversy. Councilor Weber, who also knew some history, objected that both Vladimir Horowitz and Artur Rubinstein were on record calling Walter Gieseking a committed Nazi. The proposal was tabled without a vote and the meeting adjourned. Advised by Frau Bock, the Chairman of the Council, Herr Keller, addressed the issue at the next meeting. “As Frau Bock has observed, Gieseking didn’t play Ravel or Debussy like a Nazi. What’s more, he was born in Lyon. Frau Bock has shown me Gieseking’s daughter’s statement that her father was appalled by the Nazis and that the family would certainly have remained in Switzerland in 1944 had her mother not insisted on returning to Germany to care for her parents. No one questions Gieseking’s musicianship,” Keller declared, “or his connection to Braunwald. I move that we call our competition after him.” As the matter of the great pianist’s politics was deemed unresolvable, the majority decided they be set aside in the Swiss manner and Gieseking’s name adopted.

Frau Bock was invited to head the competition’s organizing committee which would formulate the rules, secure a distinguished panel of judges, and coordinate with the Music Week orchestra. She accepted the responsibility proudly and with her customary earnestness.

Contestants entering the First Annual Walter Gieseking Piano Competition had to be between the ages of fourteen and twenty-three. They were required to provide the Committee with three recommendations from professional musicians or prestigious academies along with a video not to exceed ten minutes in length. There would be three rounds with contenders eliminated after each. In the preliminary round, contestants would perform pieces from a prescribed list, the recital not to exceed more than one hour in length. For the second round, the remaining contestants would perform the first movement of one of four Mozart concerti accompanied by the Music Week Orchestra. In the final round, the finalists would perform a recital of works of their own choice.

Though Braunwald undertook to house and feed accepted entrants, they would have to provide for their own transportation. Getting seventeen-year-old Mylena Goraya and nineteen-year-old Yishai Maimon to Switzerland consumed the travel budget of both families. As the young people had no one else with whom to take in the sights and no money to shop or sample Braunwald’s restaurants, Mylena and Yishai attended all the preliminary recitals. Each was sure the other was the best.

Meals were in the cafeteria of the Schulhaus. Mylena was shy but not Yishai. At dinner the night before the announcement of those who made it to the second round, Yishai, as usual, took his tray and sat next to Mylena.

“You played the Schumann so movingly,” he said, “and the Bach inventions—perfect!”

Mylena blushed. In a soft, heavily accented voice she replied, “You were better.”

They chatted through dinner and then went for a stroll around the town. They spoke about their favorite pianists, about their teachers, and about Braunwald.

“Odd to call the town that,” said Yishai. “Brown forest—as though all the trees had burnt.”

“Maybe it’s like Schwartzwald. Do you think brown, like black, just means dense?”

“I suppose. Probably not named after the shirts.”

“The shirts?”

They told each other about their families. Yishai explained that his grandparents had left the Soviet Union for Israel in the wave of Jewish emigration in the 1980s. Two years earlier, his father had been injured in a terrorist explosion. His mother took care of him and worked full time for an insurance company. “I wanted to quit school and help, but Mother wouldn’t hear of it. She insisted I go on with my studies.” Mylena said her family left everything behind in Kiev after the Russian invasion and, through a relative of her mother, found refuge in Belgrade. “I had to get a special document from the government to be able to leave and return. Finding a piano to practice, food, pretending to be happy for my parents—it’s hard,” said Mylena. She made a sweeping gesture with her arm. “This place does not seem quite real to me. For you?”

“The Swiss are prosperous and oblivious,” said Yishai with some bitterness. “Everything’s hygienic except the bank deposits. They have to import their poor.”

“There are poor people here?”

“I think you have to look very closely, maybe at the end of the alleys.”

Mylena laughed.

There was no romantic spark between the two, but they liked each other. That night Yishai felt less alone and Mylena less homesick.

The following morning, they learned that most of the contestants had been eliminated and that they were not. They congratulated each other.

“Which Mozart will you choose?”

“The one I prepared, of course. Just in case.”

“Me, too.”

That afternoon Yishai came into the practice room just as Mylena was finishing up. He was carrying a portfolio.

“I’m so happy to see you,” he said. Mylena blushed and gave him another smile.

“Let’s play something together,” he said. “It’ll be fun. I’ve brought along something for four hands. Here. He took out some sheet music from his portfolio. You know it?”

“Yes, of course.”

It was fun.

Only six players had made it to the Mozart round. The poker-faced panel—“the hanging judges” Yishai called them—eliminated four. Only Mylena and Yishai were left. One or the other would win the competition and the contract that was the real prize.

Neither felt pleased.

“I wish I’d been eliminated,” said Yishai gallantly.

“I should have been,” said Mylena, the perfectionist.

“I could resign, disqualify myself.”

Mylena frowned. “If you do, I will too.”

“I know! We’ll ask the Committee to declare a draw. We’ll both win—and you can have the contract.”

“Why not you?”

“Because you’re better. Also, you’re from Kiev and I’m from Tel Aviv.”

They asked to meet with Frau Block. She would not countenance a tie. “The rules,” she said sternly, “are clear. Ein Gewinner. One winner. Your recitals will be attended by the whole town. Everybody is looking forward to them, especially the tourists. So, you will not spoil things. Reporters from Zurich, Bern, and Geneva will be here. It’s possible there will be three more from Germany and two from France. No, you must compete. Also, I need your programs by this three o’clock this afternoon. Now, go away and practice!”

Every seat in the hall was filled. People stood not only at the back but also in the aisles. The mood was good, full of anticipation. Frau Block surveyed the auditorium with satisfaction. The programs had been printed on time. The more knowledgeable were discussing the choices. The judges sat silently together in the front row looking dour, each with a notebook and pen at the ready.

Mylena was to play first. There was applause when she entered. Two young people at the back unfurled a yellow and blue Ukrainian flag and shouted, “Glory to Ukraine!” Mylena was dressed in a velvet dress, dark green, the color you get by mixing yellow and blue.

She acknowledged the audience with two little nods and sat down at the Bechstein. The hall grew quiet, awaiting the first chords of Chopin’s First Ballade. She remained still for the few seconds it took Yishai to jump up from his seat and dash onto the stage. He wore a tuxedo with tails and a white kippah. He seated himself next to Mylena and laid out the sheet music.

A furious Frau Block was on her feet and stomping toward the stage when Mylena and Yishai launched into their memorable, exuberant performance of the Franco-Brazilian Scaramouche composed by the Jewish refugee Darius Milhaud seven years before Walter Gieseking left Braunwald for Germany.

Then Mylena began a Scarlatti sonata, raised her hands, and Yishai finished it, launching at once into the first movement of Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata which Mylena completed. Then with a smile, they played Debussy’s four-handed En Blanc et Noir.

The performance delighted the audience, who rose to their feet and clapped rhythmically while chanting Beide! Beide!  The judges took the hint and declared the competition a tie. The chief judge suggested they flip a Swiss franc to determine who got the prize and the contract. But the performance was so highly praised in the press that the young musicians were offered a much larger contract to perform as a duo. Everybody was pleased except save for Frau Block.

2. Chef d’Orchestre: Concertino en si bémol mineur pour alto et orchestre de chambre – entiché, ennuyeux, et ironique un peu comme le châtiment de Tantale

The internationally celebrated conductor, Johannes von Eitelmann, would have scoffed at the suggestion that he was an addict. He drank little and only to be sociable; he had a horror of drugs, even aspirin; he was monogamous during his two marriages serially thereafter. His self-discipline was legendary, his capacity for work a source of astonishment. Tall, commanding, handsome, and gifted, he had been a success from his first appearance with the Mozarteum in Salzburg after just turning twenty. Had somebody proposed that he was addicted to music, he might have cordially agreed, but with an ironic smile.

Von Eitelmann was much in demand. He seldom declined an invitation to serve as guest conductor and, in summer, flitted from festival to festival—all in addition to serving as music director of two orchestras in two countries on two continents. People thought him a dedicated workaholic, but it wasn’t work to which he was addicted, or even music. What lay behind his packed schedule and ubiquity was an insatiable craving for acclaim. He couldn’t long go without applause thickly salted with bravos. He needed the approving bows and thumb-ups from concertmasters, the fulsome reviews of critics, the deference of peers, the respectful bows of old men and, still more, the fawning of young women.

Von Eitelmann was married young, to an oboist. Helene was still a student and the glamor of the young conductor, already with a name, was as attractive as his good looks and avid pursuit of her. All this outweighed her parents’ doubts, their argument that she was too young and so, for that matter, was Johannes. Helene had no doubts. She was in love and also in awe. Von Eitelmann drank his wife’s admiration as Dracula might have her blood and, in only a year and a half, Helene found that she was drained.

Von Eitelmann’s second marriage, four years later, was to Leonie Hübsch, the favorite niece of the Austrian foreign minister. By then, he was under contract to the Philharmonic. The wedding was the social event of the year in Vienna. The guests included the president of the republic, a throng of ministers, ambassadors, famous soloists, and a good chunk of the diplomatic corps.

Leonie was well educated, cosmopolitan and, at the start, adored the man she playfully called “Maestro Mio.” However, under the unrelenting pressure to admire him, her husband’s frequent absences, and their quarrels about having the children for whom she longed and he emphatically did not, the marriage foundered. Leonie’s adoration evaporated and suo maestro turned sarcastic. The divorce, unlike the wedding, was a quiet affair. Publicity was unavoidable, but it was at least discreet. The couple was described as saddened by their decision to separate and the break was diplomatically described as amicable.

For the next three years, Johannes indulged in three liaisons when his crammed schedule permitted. The women were all star-struck music-lovers attracted by his fame. They flattered him and were, in turn, flattered by his attentions. But, when the stars dimmed and the flattery stopped, Johannes shrugged and moved on.

Grace Kronbach’s mother dragged her to the concert at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia through which she yawned, diverting herself by looking up random phrases on her smartphone. She learned that occasions of sin is credited to Saint Bernardine, a canonized misogynist and anti-Semite. Man is the only animal that blushes—or needs to. She had been pretty sure that was Mark Twain, and it was. Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee? She’d heard that line from her depressive friend Andrea, but it sounded like a quotation. And so it was, attributed to Albert Camus, but probably made up by some wag summarizing The Myth of Sisyphus. Who said The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest? Kurt Vonnegut. She giggled. “Shh,” said her mother scowling at Grace and looked daggers at her phone.

Mrs. Kronbach was only a little more interested in the benefit concert than her daughter. She was really there for the reception. As a member of the board of Women Helping Women she needed to see and be seen. She got her daughter to come with her not only because her philistine husband flatly refused to, but so that she too would be seen. In her mother’s opinion, Grace didn’t mix enough, at least not with the best society.

The program was all-female: Germaine Tailleferre’s Concertino for Harp and Orchestra, Cecile Chaminade’s Concertino for Flute and Orchestra, Fanny Mendelssohn’s Overture in C-major, and, to conclude, Clara Schumann’s Piano Concerto. The soloists were all women too, well-known professionals performing pro bono. The event attracted a lot of attention when it was announced that Johannes Von Eitelmann had consented to come down from New York, where he had just finished a stint conducting La Forza del Destino at the Metropolitan Opera.

The catered reception was mobbed. The room was barely large enough for the food and the freshly-coiffed members of Women Helping Women and their guests. Mrs. Kronbach surveyed the crowd, nodded and smiled at her fellow board members, then took Grace by the elbow and more or less dragged her to the receiving line waiting to thank and congratulate the great conductor.

“He’s very handsome,” she whispered, “even better-looking up close. Don’t you think?”

Grace said nothing. She was looking across the room at a woman in a rather ridiculous dress the color of a rotting plum.

Johannes shook Mrs. Kronbach’s offered hand and thanked her for her compliments. But his eyes were fastened on Grace. Not since the young oboist had he felt such an erotic shock. He took her in—face, figure, eyes, hair. Perhaps because of Tailleferre and Chaminade, the phrase coup de foudre came into his head. Les mots tout à juste. The maestro was well and truly smitten.

“Did you enjoy the program?” he asked Grace.

“Some of the songs were nice,” she said. “I don’t really care for classical music.”

“Songs?”

“Grace calls everything songs,” said Mrs. Kronbach quickly. “It’s exasperating. Her little brother got all the musical talent. Bradley plays the trombone.”

Johannes canceled his next engagement then the one after that. He asked Grace to an all-Chopin recital by Lang Lang. Her mother insisted that she accept. Grace was not impressed. In fact, she wanted to leave after the intermission, though she allowed that the pianist’s name was cute.

Johannes asked her to go to dinner with him. She suggested a restaurant at which, according to Andrea, it was impossible to get a reservation. He got one. Over the haute cuisine he talked only a little about himself, saying he wanted to find out what interested her. Grace said she was curious about a newly translated German play she’d heard the University’s Drama Club was putting on. “But apparently the only performance is sold out.” Johannes got tickets. The theater was exiguous, overheated, and smelled bad, the play relentlessly depressing and poorly acted. Grace liked it. She said it reminded her of Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony.” Johannes had heard of Kafka but had not read “In the Penal Colony.”

Von Eitelmann struggled to put Grace Kronbach out of his mind, to achieve an indifference that would match hers, to forget her. He failed. When she agreed to meet him for coffee, he implored her to come with him to Vienna. “I’ll be conducting my reconstruction of Mahler’s Tenth. I would love to have you at the performance.”

Grace put down her fork, looked at him with surprise, then shrugged. “But why would I do that?”

Back in Vienna for the Mahler, Von Eitelmann got his first bad review.

3. Compositeur: La Muse Infantile – thème et variations limitées en si-mineur pour basson et orchestre de soutien sous la forme d’un pneu crevé

“You’re sure you’re okay with this?”

“I can manage it.”

“You want me to show you how the diaper works again?”

“Nope. It’s been a while, but I’ve changed diapers—my stinky nephew’s. Not a problem. What I want is for the two of you to go, have a great time and not worry.”

Julia looked dubious, hesitant, but also eager and provisionally grateful. From what I knew of her husband the Patriots fan, respite care must be a blue-moon event. She and Barb, her only sister and my only helpmate, hadn’t seen each other since just after the baby was born. But they talked almost daily, and Barb could tell Julia needed a break. She asked her to come with the baby for the weekend. She had a shopping list and a romcom she’d like to see. Barb would be getting a respite, too.

“I guess he can handle a diaper, even if he’s useless as a composer,” she said making it sound like a joke, as if I weren’t useless.

Julia changed the subject. “I’ll feed Autumn. She always goes down right after.”

Autumn. An unusual name, but a good one, pretty but serious.

“It’s because she was born on the twenty-second, first day of Fall. She came with the equinox,” Julia had explained on our postpartum visit to adore the infant.

“I think it’s nice,” Barb said, “and there won’t be a lot of other Autumns in her classes. There were always about ten other Barbaras in mine.”

Julia reviewed the paraphernalia with me three times. The bottle. The diapers. The little stuffed dromedary. The pacifier. The collapsible playpen. The infant seat.

“You probably won’t need most of it.”

“Check,” I said.

When Julia declared the baby officially down, the sisters left, giggling like schoolgirls even before the door shut behind them.

My parents were less than pleased that I went to a university that turned out captains of industry, precocious entrepreneurs, lawyers, doctors, bankers, and members of Congress but chose music as my major. They regarded my piano playing and the little pieces I wrote in my early years as tolerable hobbies for a teenager, not a career for a grown-up who might want to live in the middle class. “Composing isn’t a livelihood,” they said. The composers they could name had all been dead for a long time.

Barbara didn’t agree with them. When we were married she encouraged my artistic ambition and maybe that was part of my attraction for her. After all, her own major had been art history. But, after a few years of failure, blockage, frustration, and short money, she more or less adopted the view of Mom and Dad.

My day job at the time was operating a forklift for the Donnelly Manufacturing Company, part-time. It paid less than Barb’s bookkeeping gig and that didn’t pay much.

“Tell me again why you can’t get a proper job,” she said one night in bed.

“You really want me to say it again?”

“Oh, right,” she said bitingly. “It’s because you need the time for composing.” She made an unpleasant noise, turned out the light and her back on me.

Autumn slept for maybe an hour. I was in the living room, stalking the spinet, waiting for a phrase, an interval, anything that might have traction. I did that a lot. I hadn’t written anything in months and not very much before that. Would I have sold my soul for a leitmotif? Maybe, but nobody offered.

Barbara was hinting at divorce. Two days before she had said, “Maybe you’d do better if I weren’t here. Maybe I would, too. You know?” I fantasized about her moving in with my parents so they could enjoy long evenings trashing me en-masse. I had a notion that leaving me with her infant niece might have been a hint. Not only should I give up musical composition and forklifts, but I ought to make her pregnant and get a proper job. My parents would love that, especially if the grandchild came with an office.

Autumn was in the bedroom. Julia had laid her down in the playpen on a little mattress with a pair of rolled-up pink blankets hemming her in. She was crying but it sounded more like a demand for company than distress. When she saw me, she smiled and put out her little arms. I picked her up carefully. She hugged my neck.

“Would you like to hear a joke? Well, a riddle, actually,” I said to her angelic face. “Yes? Well then, what’s the difference between a composer and large pepperoni pizza? You don’t know? The pizza can feed a family of four.”

She giggled just as if she got it.

We went on a tour of the kitchen then the living room. Autumn pointed at the spinet. Holding her to my chest with my right arm, I picked out a little of Ravel’s left-handed piano concerto. She made an approving noise.

I found the infant seat, put it down on the floor beside the piano, and laid her in it. That was when we locked eyes.

Have you ever noticed that some infants have this weirdly wise expression, as if they know something terribly important they haven’t yet forgotten but you have? Well, it might just have been gas, but that was the look Autumn gave me. It felt encouraging, comforting. Here at last, I thought, was someone who believed in me.

She began to babble. I imitated her noises back at her. Then I sat down and played them on the piano. She loved that. She’d babble whole notes, half-notes, quarter-notes—then wait for me to play them. She squealed and babbled some more, and I played them back. I couldn’t say which of us was more enchanted.

I found a piece of paper, drew in the lines, and wrote down what Autumn prattled and what I played. When she tired of the game and dozed off, I left her in the infant seat and started playing with the notes. I found a theme, a promising, generative sort of tune—lovely, light, simple but also pregnant. I played it softly, looked down on the sleeping infant and whispered, “Bless you, child.” Then I fetched her dromedary and laid it next to her.

Over the next week, I made a set of variations on the theme. I wrote them one after another at a speed I’d never before attained. Barb liked the piece, though she complained about my playing late into the night. But, above all, she was amazed to see her husband, that futile and feckless figure of futility, filling pages of sheet music so quickly.

The music came easily, the way I’ve heard some women describe a second birth. Autumn, Theme and Variations was completed in ten busy days, nine inspired nights.

The first variation was a sunny portrait of baby Autumn. Next came a march for the return to school, then a harvest minuet, an impressionist rendering of colorful leaves, a variation for the Jewish holidays with an obligato that sounded like a Klezmer clarinet. I made a jagged variation to represent high-school anxiety and a sweet one for budding hormonal romances. The final variation was seasonal too, autumnal melancholy in a mournful slow and gentle minor. It was all good.

I was exhausted in absolutely the best sense, like a salmon who had fought a river, climbed a dam, dodged grizzlies, made it home and spawned. Even Barb was provisionally impressed. “It’s the best thing you’ve done,” she admitted. “For your sake, I hope there’s more to come.”

I sent an email to Professor Cromwell, the one teacher at the Institute who had encouraged me. I told him I thought I’d made a breakthrough and described the piece. He wrote back that he was glad to hear from me and offered to get together the following Tuesday afternoon.

We met in his office then went to a basement practice room. I played Autumn for him, all of it. He was enthusiastic. “Bravo!” he exclaimed tapping his fingers together by way of applause. And he did more than that.

“Look, I know the music director of the Symphony. We’re old friends. Fred’s always on the lookout for new work to premiere, especially by somebody local. New—but not too new, of course. You know what I mean. Premieres are rare. They’re not what subscribers subscribe for. Your piece is tuneful, accessible, yet contemporary. May I make a suggestion?”

I was beaming. “Of course.”

“Orchestrate it and I’ll make sure it gets to Fred.”

“Wonderful! Of course I’ll do it.”

“Good. Let me know when it’s ready. I happen to know they’ve left a slot open for the final concert and your variations might fill it. Work hard and don’t dawdle.”

I did work hard. I did the orchestration in a month. It was fun, the way work ought to be. Professor Cromwell was as good as his word. Friedrich Böhm agreed to look at the score. He said that would be sufficient. He didn’t need to hear it.

Autumn led off the final program of the season. Barbara bought a purple dress. My parents came. The piece was a hit. The critics were almost excessively generous with their praise. It was performed in Cleveland and San Francisco the next season. I was called up on stage on both occasions. I accepted two commissions and said farewell to the forklift.

Then. . . nothing. The salmon went belly up in the water. I sat at the piano. I stared at the paper. I started and stopped. I tore up a lot of sheet music. Barbara complained about our bank account. “Blocked again today?” That was how she greeted me when she got home from work.

My desperation swelled like a boil. Then I had an idea.

“Let’s visit Julia this weekend,” I said to Barb. “I’m sure the two of you would like to see each other. And maybe if I got away.”

“Really? You think? Well, I can give her a call and see if she’ll have us.”

Of course, it wasn’t Julia I wanted to see, or her football-loving spouse. It was Autumn.

She had grown. She was walking and even saying a few words. When Barb and I came into the house, she hid behind her mother and wouldn’t look me in the eye. The wisdom had gone. The babbling was replaced by Mommy, Daddy, and especially No.

I still try once in a while, but less and less. The piano’s out of tune, Barb is pregnant, and I work in insurance.

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Robert Wexelblatt is a professor of humanities at Boston University’s College of General Studies. He has published eleven collections of short stories; two books of essays; two short novels; three books of poems; stories, essays, and poems in a variety of journals; and a novel awarded the Indie Book Awards first prize for fiction.