Alice's Piano Page 7

  This summer afternoon in 1920 there were more people on the streets than usual. Happy with the progress she had made, Alice was swept along with the crowds and soon found herself in the elegant Wenceslas Square where the army was parading in dress uniforms. As a squadron of cavalry rode up she stood entranced: at their head was a strikingly well-built older man of majestic bearing—the president of the republic, Tomáš Masaryk, who fought so passionately for the new democracy and for cooperation between Czechs, Germans and Jews. How often she had heard his name in these last few months in her parents’ home and above all at that of her brother-in-law, Felix Weltsch.

  Alice gazed at Masaryk for a long time. Although she was aware that she was invisible in the crowd she felt as if she was meeting the president in person. In less than two years since the state had been founded he had brought national and international prestige to the new republic as a result of his humanistic and democratic thinking. His integrity was universally admired and it was considered that he would make tolerance between the different ethnic groups a central plank of his politics at home. His speech of 22 December 1918 in which he spoke of “justice as the mathematics of humanism” was on everyone’s lips.

  Alice naturally knew that the former professor of sociology was also a passionate music lover. His wife Charlotte Garrigue had studied music in Leipzig, and his son Jan was not just a diplomat and, later, a highly regarded politician, he was also a pianist and composer. Surely the new German Academy of Music was directly attributable to his policies? Surely the fact that Alice was permitted to apply to the master class was thanks to him?

  * * *

  EVERY TUESDAY just after nine o’clock in the morning, and in the period before the audition sometimes even twice or three times a week, Alice interrupted her practice: Václav Štěpán was expecting her at ten. She liked the walk to his house, not just because it cost less than going by tram: she was used to going everywhere by foot, come rain or shine.

  From her earliest days Alice had made Goethe’s line her own. Prague was indeed “the prettiest gem in the stone crown of the world.” There was always something new to discover in her home city. She made her long journey along the banks of the Moldau, past the heights of the Belvedere and through the Lesser Town, which allowed a full view of the castle, to the borough of Smichow. There, in a smart new building, not far from the Franzensbrücke Bridge, was Štěpán’s apartment.

  Alice was full of joyful anticipation when she arrived and exchanged a few words with the good-humored porter. The house belonged to a Czech musical society. On the ground floor there were offices and a concert hall in which Alice later performed. A broad, curved staircase led up to the first floor where Štěpán lived with his wife Ilonka, also a successful pianist. She was the daughter of Wilhelm Kurz, who had been born in Lemberg, taught music in Brno and Prague and was a close friend of the composer Leoš Janáček.

  Alice longed to be part of this world: she had been passionate about Czech music from the first and it was in this house that she was plunged into a proper Czech cultural circle for the first time. She had never known such groups existed before. Although Štěpán had perfect mastery of the German language, Alice spoke to him exclusively in Czech—and with no accent. From her teacher she acquired the view that a piano piece should be interpreted in such a personal way that it was equivalent to playing a new work, but for all that no changes should be made and the piece should be played as it had been set down in the score. In questions of rhythm in particular, Štěpán was categorical and he demanded total concentration. Despite this, the lessons were fun. Like so many Czechs, Štěpán was endowed with a particularly subversive sense of humor.

  To get the best from her lesson, which was only forty-five minutes long, Alice took care to memorize all the master’s little maxims. Afterward she sat down on a step on the stairs directly opposite the door to Štěpán’s flat and noted down everything from the class in a little notebook that she always carried with her.

  One day when she was still sitting lost in thought on her step, the piano teacher came dashing out of his flat. He wanted to make a telephone call from the offices and tripped over Alice, and only in the nick of time was he able to prevent himself from falling flat on his face.

  “But Gigi, what are you doing there?” he blurted out in shock while he clutched on to the banister.

  Alice was embarrassed and showed him the notebook. Štěpán leafed through it page by page. For months Alice had been copying down every instruction down to the smallest detail. He had never come across such application.

  “But why don’t you take these notes during the lesson?”

  “I don’t want to waste a moment of the time we have together.”

  * * *

  FINALLY THE day of the audition came. Only thirty out of roughly twice that number would be given a place in the master class. The tension during the preliminary heats was unbearable. The famous firm of Förster had donated two grand pianos for teaching purposes which now stood like holy relics on the stage of the new hall. The examinees sat in a semi-circle around the stage while other students from the Academy sat in the seats behind them.

  Alice sat down comfortably at the piano, knowing that she was well prepared for the day. Her playing impressed everyone present, including Conrad Ansorge. He whispered to his fellow jury members: “This Herz is a really tremendous girl.”

  Alice got in; she was the youngest member of the master class.

  At the end of the auditions Ansorge gave his inaugural speech. His thoughts went back to the years 1885 and 1886 when he had been in Franz Liszt’s master class in Weimar. On the first day Liszt had told the class that he felt not the slightest desire to talk about any problems of technique. Practicing technique was like washing dirty linen, it was something you did at home: “and that is precisely what I expect of you as well. I shall take it for granted now that you will apply all necessary diligence to perfecting your technique.”

  His teaching was above all concerned with interpretation. “I am convinced that most of you would be interested in what the great Liszt thought important,” Ansorge went on, “and in recognition of your efforts the best of you will play at our twice-yearly public concert.”

  During their three-year training the budding pianists would perform regularly. At the end of the third year a final concert would be given, to which the four best players of the previous concerts were admitted. “The winner will be awarded a Förster concert grand,” Ansorge rounded off his speech before sitting down at the piano.

  The effect his playing must have had on Alice and her fellow students is clear from a critic, who wrote in 1922: “Ansorge is the Gerhart Hauptmann of pianists and as such the greatest at thoughtfulness, dreaminess and self-abnegation. Here in the adagio-style Ansorge offers shading with an indescribable whiff of ether and a celestial tonal color. He plays the slow movements of the Beethoven concertos and sonatas as if detached from all earthly playing.” The members of his new master class thanked him with prolonged applause.

  When Alice came home that day, laughing in a relaxed way that had eluded her for weeks, her friend Trude Hutter was waiting for her. “I knew it,” Trude said, guessing the cause of her friend’s happiness immediately, “now tell me, how did it go?”

  Trude wanted to know everything: what did Conrad Ansorge look like? “Like an actor at the court theater.” Had he impressed Alice? What had he said about her? And what had everyone felt about his playing?

  Alice answered patiently, but when Trude asked her whether there were any good-looking men in the master class Alice shook her head in amazement. “The very idea of it! I am not attending the master class to meet men!”

  But Trude would not let her go. “Do you mean to say that none of them took your fancy? Maybe there was one who was particularly nice or interesting?” Alice shook her head again: “Trude … You are incorrigible.”

  * * *

  LESSONS BEGAN the next morning. Conrad Ansorge announced t
hat in future pupils should attend the class for three consecutive days each month. Every student then had half an hour of his attention to work on their chosen pieces with him.

  Alice loved to listen to the others playing and to think about the master’s comments. From the first bar in the morning until the end of the day she remained fully alert and observed what was going on around her.

  It did not escape her notice that after an hour and a half Ansorge ordered a pause and left the Academy. Alice watched him from the window as he crossed the road and, without further ado, disappeared into a restaurant. He repeated the process at midday and after his return Ansorge was far less attentive than he had been at the start of the day. And he smelled of alcohol. In the afternoon he disappeared for a third time, after which it was clear that his ability to concentrate was yet further impaired.

  Next day, when the drawing-up of a timetable was proposed, Alice put her hand up: “I would be very happy, as the youngest member of the class, if I could always play first.” Ansorge agreed and for the next three years Alice had the privilege of opening the monthly course and playing to her teacher, who—at that early hour—was sober and able to follow what she was doing.

  After six months, Conrad Ansorge gave out the names of those who would give the first master class concert. No matter how hard Alice worked, she was always critical of her performances. In her opinion at least half the students merited a chance to perform in the concert, but she was only really certain about one of them, the Hungarian Jenö Kalicz. Alice admired his ability from the start, and she liked his amiably reserved style and she found his accent funny.

  The first time they spoke she had to laugh out loud. “Alice, why you make these dangerous leaps with the fingers?” he asked her. She needed to think for a moment about what he meant before she realized that he meant her fingering and had confused “dangerous” with “unusual.” Since then they had often discussed music together.

  Jenö Kalicz was one of the six elected and so was Alice. After Conrad Ansorge called out the names, she ran home and began practicing straightaway. There was just a week before the concert and in the intervening time her mother had to force food down her. The evening before the concert, she practiced solidly, refusing to take a single break.

  The German Academy of Music’s first public concert was held at the beginning of March 1921. It was a success, not only for the Academy and Conrad Ansorge but also for the youngest pianist. Of all the pieces played it was Alice’s interpretation of the Schumann Abegg Variations which left the most profound impression. The Prager Tagblatt wrote the next day: “the prize for the evening goes to Alice Herz.”

  * * *

  ALICE HAD been aware for a long time that the family piano was not up to the demands imposed by the master class. Sofie Herz and her two brothers had played on it as a child and she had brought the old instrument with her from Iglau as part of her dowry. A Prague piano tuner had made it clear to the Herz parents that the repair of the piano would be expensive and that it would be wise to buy a new one. But there was no money.

  Alice, ever resourceful, found a way out of her predicament. At fourteen she had begun to teach a fellow piano student. Now she made the decision to allocate three afternoons a week to piano teaching so that she could save enough money for the new piano. In her precise calculations she totted up how many pupils she needed in order to be able to raise the necessary sum within nine months.

  With characteristic strength of will she set out her plans. Her pupils were scattered throughout Prague, but she traveled the long distances on foot. When the time came the dealer took the old piano away and paid her a small sum toward its replacement: it was not new, but it had a much better tone.

  Now, when she could, she practiced for six to eight hours every day, and even the few hours left were given over to music. Alice was as happy to do her theory as she was to sing in the Academy choir, which relied on her alto voice. In the afternoons it was her turn to teach and several times a week she went to concerts, as the Academy regularly had free tickets to hand out. Standing or sitting right at the back Alice was able to hear the guest performances of many internationally known artists at the German or Czech theaters.

  In her second year Alice was once again allowed to play in the spring concert. A week before her appearance the thirty-eight-year-old Wilhelm Backhaus gave a performance in Prague. One of the most famous pianists of his day, he played Beethoven’s Sonata in A flat major, Op. 110 which Alice had been practicing for weeks. Her fellow students advised her that it would be better to switch to another work at the last minute than beg comparisons with Backhaus. Alice, however, would not be put off, and obtained a ticket to the Backhaus concert—and she refused to change her interpretation of the piece.

  As it was she withstood the baptism of fire. The day after her performance the Czech newspaper Bohemia wrote: “We have heard this sonata twice this week, once from Backhaus and the second time from Alice Herz. Her interpretation measured up to that of her famous rival.”

  The Prager Tagblatt not only praised Alice’s progress which “has revealed itself in this past year to be the most surprising [of all the students in her class]” but went on to say that beside her “powerfully mature technical assurance” above all she possessed “fire and passion, the will to create and an understanding rare in someone of her years.” A year before “there was scarcely the seed of this to be seen, but now it has become a potent flower.”1

  It was obvious that Conrad Ansorge shared the critics’ views. For a year he had been convinced that along with Jenö Kalicz his youngest pupil would be playing in the final master class concert.

  * * *

  “ALICE, WE are happy today and we should today clink glasses.”

  After the concert a lively group of master class students repaired to the castle to celebrate. Jenö Kalicz ordered a bottle of Mosel, but before he could pour some into Alice’s glass, she put her hand over it: “Please may I have a glass of water?” she said, “Still water.”

  “But Alica,” Jenö exclaimed in his usual theatrical way, “why watair?”

  “Just have a look at our Ansorge,” Alice said with a laugh. “At 9 A.M. he is a real master, as he is still sober. At eleven he is tipsy and inattentive. By midday he is useless either as a pianist or a teacher. Don’t you think playing the piano and drinking alcohol are mutually exclusive?”

  “My dear Alica,” Jenö said warmly, in the same melting tone he had employed in the past two years and which for two years had failed to have the desired effect, “you lo-ove Schumann, and Schumann lo-oved Clara and drink. Schumann was a regular, he drank dai-aily in Leipzig’s Café Baum. Go-ood wine, contented mood, wonderful feelings!”

  Alice liked a good joke, but when it was about drink she had no sense of humor: “Jenö, if you don’t watch out you’ll go the same way as Ansorge!”

  Later that evening Alice was glad that Jenö walked her home through the dark streets. He pranced merrily backward and forward between the road and the pavement and—as he thought there was a chance this might have relaxed her—he turned toward Alice and tried to bring down the proverbial wall she had erected around herself.

  “Alica, you lo-ove Schumann, I lo-ove Schumann. You lo-ove playing piano. I lo-ove playing piano.” Alice agreed with a smile. “Alica, I like you. You like me, not true?”

  A shadow crossed Alice’s face: “Jenö, I am eighteen. How old are you?”

  “Oh, my Alica, when Clara was sixteen years old, Robert Schumann was twenty-six. You know how the story finishes.”

  They had now reached the door of her parents’ home in Bělsky Street. The lovesick Jenö carefully stooped over Alice to take her in his arms. She was painfully moved but fought him off.

  “Alica,” he started up, “music…”

  “I know,” Alice said in a slightly harsher tone than she intended: “Music is love and love is music.”

  Jenö had repeated this phrase countless times in the past two years�
�and he still wasn’t thinking of giving up.

  “Alica, I have read everything about Clara and Robert, and I will tell you now a secret from Clara’s diary. These are the words: ‘When you kissed me for the first time, I thought I was near to fainting, it went dark before my eyes, the light that should have guided us I could scarcely see.’”2

  Alice took a step backward, and Jenö pursued her a last time: “Alica, music is love and love is music. I like you, you like me, yes?” Alice nodded. “Why I might not give Hungarian kiss?”

  “Good night, Jenö,” was Alice’s response, and she disappeared through the door of her house.

  Even in their final year Alice refused to go out alone with Jenö. But because Alice made him believe that an age difference of nearly ten years had to be a reason for caution, they arrived at a relaxed friendship, which would unite them from henceforth. In reality, however, Alice’s heart was already beating for another man, who was not ten, but fifteen years older than she was.

  * * *

  LOOKING AT it objectively, Rudolf Kraus was not a particularly attractive man. He was small and undistinguished, but Alice felt drawn to him. Everything about him fascinated her, everything he represented was in some way extraordinary—his charm and sophistication; his jaunty step; his boldness and sporting ability. She found even the way he puffed on a cigarette so individual that she tried taking up smoking herself, though she soon stopped—for good. There was no question about it: Alice was in love for the first time in her life.

  The two had come together by chance. Rudolf’s father was a dentist and he treated the entire Herz family including Alice, who was a friend of his daughter’s. At weekends Trude Kraus often invited a large body of friends round. The Krauses’ flat was next door to the surgery on the first floor of a solid patrician house in the City Park, not far from the German National Theater. Alice used to sound out the pieces she was studying on Trude’s guests.