Janina Fialkowska - A Note In Time

The music, played on unfamiliar instruments and tuned in a way to which I was unaccustomed, sounded alien to me at first. But the performers were, for the most part, outstanding, and good music played at a high level will always stir the soul, whether the instrument is a Stradivarius or a tin whistle.

For a week we hardly slept, so that by the time the last good-byes were said and the final post-mortems were over, we were beat. I had two days before I had to fly back to the US for a cruel two-month separation. To have had the good fortune of finding the love of my life well into my middle years, only to be faced with the constant prospect of future separations, was hard to bear. In an attempt to alleviate the pain as best we could, we planned a brief trip to Paris, a city we both loved but had never visited together, for two nights before I continued on to New York. We were both so exhausted that jokingly we told all our friends that we were flying to Paris to take a nap. Which is exactly what happened – unintentionally. When we foolishly lay down on the bed after our arrival on a golden Parisian autumn day, we promptly fell asleep, losing the entire first afternoon.

Luckily the next day was also glorious and we decided to do all the touristy things that for years, as seasoned, snooty Francophiles, we had scorned. So, we climbed to the top of the Eiffel tower, drank tea and ate pastries in Montmartre, and rode the Bateau Mouche at sunset. It was a heavenly day; my first day of true relaxation since well before the death of my mother.

A few days later, on September 10th, I was in New York City for a meeting with my accountant and my financial advisor. The meeting wasn’t very taxing, and I didn’t have to fake looking interested or nodding in deep understanding when, in truth, I hadn’t a clue what they were talking about, which was normally the case; the hour passed very pleasantly.

The next morning was so beautiful and the sky so crystal clear and piercingly blue that Bill, my financial advisor, made the spontaneous decision to walk to work even though it would mean he arrived a bit later than usual. As he approached his office at the World Trade Centre, he saw a huge passenger jet crash into one of the twin towers. The Solomon Smith Barney building, where Bill’s office was located, was the third and last building to completely disintegrate as a result of the brutal attack on 9/11. In seconds, America the complacent was plunged into chaos.

The psychological impact of that day’s events was horrific and far-reaching. The fact that human beings could be driven, by whatever motives, to plan, execute, and rejoice over the murder of thousands using planes filled with live individuals as grotesque battering rams – and all this in the name of God – defies comprehension. But then, evil has always existed, and human nature has clearly not progressed since our days in caves. It is just that our methods of harming each other have been modernized, and 9/11 was a particularly shocking new twist on man’s moral depravity.

All day we were glued transfixed to our television screens, Harry in Germany, myself in our house in Connecticut. The pictures of devastation and destruction were replayed over and over again, forever branded in our memories.

Somehow, life had to continue, and it limped painfully along over the next few weeks. In spite of the turmoil, I had contracts to fulfill and concerts to play – with the considerable impediment caused by the temporary closure of all American airports. To get anywhere I either had to drive myself or find circuitous routes via Canada and Canadian airports. I managed to reach all the venues in time for the performances, but missed a few of the vital orchestral rehearsals – once with dire consequences, since putting together the massive Brahms D minor piano concerto in a small town with a good but secondary orchestra requires more than just a quick run-through before the concert. I was quite mortified by the flawed result, every bar a nightmare of insecurity, though there was a form of redemption when the concert was repeated the next day and Brahms was treated more honorably. The whole experience wore me out completely.

Even when US airports reopened, there was an atmosphere of hysterical paranoia everywhere, as new, oftentimes defective, security machines were being installed, and security personnel floundered. Passengers sweated and waited in the long, hot lines, unused to the removal of shoes and jackets for the airport scanners and to the unpacking and scrutinizing of computers and telephones. Delays became routine and, although no one complained, tension was omnipresent.

It was ironic that this was one of my busiest fall seasons ever. The repertoire I had to prepare – seventeen concertos for piano and orchestra, two full recital programs and a Lieder recital program – was enough to tire out even a seasoned veteran. I barely noticed when my upper left arm felt sore after a weekend in Kingston, Ontario, where I had just performed all five Beethoven concertos. It had been a thrilling experience, but by the end my arm felt like lead and throbbed with pain. I ignored it and moved on to Chopin in Calgary and Bartok in Stavanger, Norway, where the December sun made only a vague appearance at midday and Harry and I shopped for Christmas tree ornaments. Harry had joined me there and the orchestra had put us up in a rustic little cottage near the hall. We enjoyed ourselves thoroughly; the concerts went well, and we were finally together again.

After Norway there were no more concerts until January, so we booked ourselves into a “Wellness Hotel” in the Bavarian Alps for three days. I had generously given Harry my lingering cold, which I had caught in Iowa months previously, so he spent two of the three days in bed reading books and surrounded by mounds of Kleenex. The mercury dropped to –20 and a winter storm raged outside. Gone were all thoughts of picturesque hikes in the snow-covered mountains. We were more or less prisoners in the hotel, but I had discovered they had a beautiful swimming pool and was using it frequently. I remember quite clearly walking past a mirror clad in only my bathing suit and noticing that my left arm appeared to be quite swollen. I remarked on this to Harry, who took a look at it, but neither of us was particularly perturbed. I had read somewhere that tennis players often develop big muscles in their right arms from overuse and decided that in my case the over-development just happened to be in the left arm.

Christmas, our first as a married couple, was pleasant and greatly enhanced by our newly acquired Norwegian ornaments. There was plenty of snow in Bavaria, and the Christmas markets were enchanting. I slipped back into “Frau Oesterle” mode and found myself caught up in the intense social whirlwind of a German Christmas. For a shy person like myself, this was sometimes intimidating, but people were very tolerant and I was eager to fit in amongst Harry’s vast circle of friends. I was becoming more and more enamored of Bavaria and its Baroque churches, awe-inspiring abbeys, fairy-tale cities and divine countryside.

On New Year’s Eve, Harry and I walked up to the top of a nearby hill, the snow crisp under foot and glistening under a brilliant moonlit sky. At the stroke of midnight, the fireworks began and church bells from all the surrounding villages rang out in celebration of the New Year. It was a precious moment of happiness and of hope.

The next morning, I was back at the piano working furiously on my upcoming recital program. In an attempt to kick-start my somewhat neglected European career, which would enable me to cut back on North American concerts so that I could spend more time with Harry, I had offered to presenters a blockbuster recital program which included the ferociously difficult, complete Transcendental Studies of Franz Liszt for the spring of 2002. Much as I passionately love the music, I admit this was a bit of a gimmicky “tour de force” for, up to that point, few men and perhaps no women, other than myself, had ever attempted this feat in a live concert. Various presenters on both sides of the Atlantic were seduced by the idea and invited me to their cities, with the end result that, although I had my usual recital tour in North America, there was also a magnificent tour of Europe lined up, beginning in March of 2002 and including London, Paris and Rome, as well as appearances in Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany and Great Britain.