Who, indeed? Catheryn wondered.
Mother, musician, wife, came the answer, followed by a bitter addendum: And possibly not the latter for much longer. She remembered her husband’s hateful accusation of the night before, again feeling his words settling like spit on her face. She had wanted to lash out, protest her innocence, scream her knowledge of his betrayal. Most of all, she had wanted to hurt him, hurt him as he had hurt her. Resolutely, Catheryn shook her head, resolving to take a page from her husband’s playbook and put off thinking about things until later. With a near-paralyzing case of preconcert jitters, she already had enough on her plate. Tomorrow would be soon enough. Not now.
Almost time.
Taking a deep breath, Catheryn focused on the concerto she was about to perform, reviewing it in her mind. At the turn of the nineteenth century, during a protracted visit to the United States, Antonin Dvorak had written his lyric, emotional concerto for cello, and the unchallenged masterpiece spoke of years of homesickness for his family and his native Prague. Grimly, Catheryn realized that the heartbreaking composition constituted a perfect embodiment of her own turbulent mood as well.
A moment later the concertmaster rose at the head of the first violin section, a signal for the orchestra to settle. At his nod, the principal oboist played an A. The strings joined in, then the brass and woodwinds, with a number of musicians making minor tuning adjustments. Finally the sounds of preparation died away, leaving an air of expectation filling the hall.
The music director moved to stand beside Catheryn. “Ready?” he asked softly.
With a plunge of both excitement and dread, Catheryn turned to face him, finding herself unable to reply. The handsome young Venezuelan conductor, who had recently taken the reins of the Los Angeles Philharmonic as music director at the early age of twenty-eight, smiled reassuringly. “It’s time. Are you ready?”
Catheryn swallowed, trying to hide her nervousness. “I hope so.”
“Don’t worry, Catheryn. You’ll do fine,” he said. As he took her hand to lead her onstage, he added cryptically, “And tonight, I think you’ll discover something about yourself, something wonderful.”
At their appearance, a round of tepid applause rose from the audience, the lukewarm welcome understandably laden with an air of reserve at the last minute soloist change. At a wave from the music director, the entire assembly of musicians stood. Carrying her cello and bow in her left hand, Catheryn numbly greeted the concertmaster. Then, glancing neither left nor right, she made her way to a platform beside the conductor’s podium. Feeling the warmth of the spotlights, she sat, desperately trying to compose herself. The music director also stopped briefly to shake hands with the first violinist. Then, after nodding to several other players, he signaled for the orchestra members to take their seats.
Once he had taken his place on the podium, the young conductor paused, allowing the audience to quiet. Slight rustlings, a few coughs. Then silence. He raised his hands. A hush fell over the hall. Catheryn felt the room crackling with tension.
And then they began.
Like all works of its type, Dvorak’s cello concerto had been written, on one level, as a means of providing a virtuosic display by a solo musician, who often carried the burden of melody alone. On another level, however, the soloist’s role was to provide a personal link between composer and listener, enabling an artist like Dvorak to speak the emotions of his innermost heart directly to his audience. For this reason, the arrival of the solo instrument during the first movement of a concerto is always an important and much anticipated event.
Catheryn sat nervously during these first few minutes, bow held loosely in her right hand, listening as the voice of the orchestra gradually filled the hall-softly at first, only the winds, then the strings, swelling as the horns merged in. Bittersweet and chilling, the opening theme was repeated as various sections picked up the threads and passed them on, promising more. An achingly beautiful solo-horn exposition of the second theme followed, the emotive music rising anew as the winds picked it up and then the entire ensemble joined them, finally dying to a whisper. And then it was time.
Catheryn lifted her bow.
High in the Terrace East section of the hall, Victor Carns sat in the audience. On an impulse he had purchased tickets to the Christmas Eve concert weeks earlier, shortly after he’d begun his investigation of Daniel Kane. That Kane’s wife Catheryn had unexpectedly been elevated for tonight’s performance from a supporting role to that of soloist made things even better. Now, as the concert began, Carns leaned forward, waiting for Catheryn Kane’s opening bars, sensing a current of anticipation, like the tendrils of some invisible yet palpable force, coursing through the hall.
Four minutes into the piece, Catheryn’s cello spoke at last. Sonorous and earthy, it seemed to draw its tones from the very bowels of the stage. Carns felt the audience stir around him. And as Catheryn continued, her playing charged with an emotion Carns couldn’t feel yet acknowledged nonetheless, he noticed a change coming over those around him. He saw it in their faces, and in their attention, and in the way they straightened in their seats. Something extraordinary was happening there that night. Everyone knew it. Even Carns.
Although he hadn’t intended to, Carns listened as he had never listened before. Driving and relentless, the concerto unfolded in Catheryn’s sure hands, the formidable challenges of the work engendering a music of power and grace, the virtuoso passages leading inevitably from one exhilarating revelation to the next. Within moments of Catheryn’s starting, no doubt existed concerning her mastery of her instrument, yet her performance embodied more than bravura. Despite her technical brilliance, it was the emotion with which she played that transported the audience, and though he felt none of the passion clearly being experienced by others around him, Carns found himself ensnared by the sound of her playing as well. And as the concerto progressed, he began to sense an inexorable need swelling within him, rising with each new passage.
Catheryn could feel it. They were with her now, all of them, and she with them, from musicians in the front row to players at the last stands in the back. It had happened partway through the opening movement, after the difficult glissando leading to a reprise of the second theme. Normally a moment of tremendous exaltation, this time it had become even more. Until then they’d all struggled a bit-the other musicians not used to the new soloist, she unaccustomed to performing with the full ensemble. And then at that instant something had changed… something magical.
They had become one.
Near silence had prevailed at the thunderous end of the first movement. Then, during the adagio, a spiritual, songlike interlude replete with dreamy introspection as tender as a first love, Catheryn found colors and feelings she hadn’t known existed. And the orchestra had followed. Once again the audience had remained as still as death during the abbreviated second break.
Now, as they approached the conclusion of the final movement, it was with surprise and regret that Catheryn realized they were nearly finished. She felt strong, balanced, powerful. She never wanted it to end. Still, one of the sweetest sections was yet to come. Seconds later Catheryn and the first violin embarked on a brief duet, reprising a theme taken from a previous work of Dvorak’s that his sister-in-law had loved, and that he’d quoted in the extended coda as a memorial following her death. Catheryn glanced at the concertmaster as they proceeded with the sentimental inclusion. The violinist looked back, pleasure shining in his eyes.
Slowly, after a journey of incredible serenity, the song-theme died to a sigh, a whisper, then nothing. Next came a stormy crescendo, with the entire orchestra joining in for the final triumphant bars. And then it was over.