The virtuoso pianist
Bell, Robert H.
corner of death." The official colonial coat-of-arms of Ayacucho is that of the apocalyptic Lamb of God sitting on the book of seven seals, holding aloft the banner of victory. Holy Week...
...My wife returned home agitated...
...Rand's gall...
...Platonic dialogue in hand (the Phaedo), Jane parries firmly but politely with Dr...
...Mrs...
...He started to play from memory, deleted an expletive, stopped abruptly, fumbled for his music, and finally completed a lovely Chopin prelude...
...Poor woman, I mused...
...from death to resurrection...
...I asked, a sudden queasiness in my bowels...
...She called my mother and told her to bake a cake...
...She is surrounded by veterans of the RSC, but manages to shine above them by catching the personality of a remarkable Renaissance woman...
...Then it was my turn...
...A week before the party Mrs...
...She assigned me a brief air from The Marriage of Figaro, a duet with little Timmy, and "We Three Kings of Orient Are...
...I've come back to Lima to arm myself for the revolution...
...I was placed in the back row with the other tall people, Dr...
...I greeted him...
...Appropriately for a director of Dickens (and currently in London, a stage version of Les Mis$rables), Nunn has attempted to portray a wider image of sixteenth-century England than we normally get...
...Cecil sat down at the piano, tossed his long blonde hair, cast me an arrogant glance, and performed "The Happy Fisherman" with astonishing rapidity and finesse...
...We meet four times a year and everybody plays...
...Hastings interjected...
...But many old-time film "epics" do the same, supplanting concern with believable character and engaging plot for concern with gorgeous externals and juicy naughtiness...
...Ladies and gentlemen," I announced, "as Paganini and Rubenstein said at their famous joint concert in Prague, 'Permit us to lay that one on you again.' " We did better the second time...
...I spent hours memorizing this complex composition...
...I said...
...Hastings explained that Dr...
...I thought, "Mrs...
...Who says you are doing fine...
...Nunn presents Jane as an abused child, beaten into an arranged political wedding with a noble rogue...
...The next week I found eight-year-old Timmy McGrew completing his lesson with Mrs...
...Bob, can your wife bake a cake...
...Hastings, my new teacher, II took one look at my technique and another at my Bach assignments...
...Lady Jane almost achieves the grandeur of that film...
...Hastings telephoned...
...Deliver a baby, indeed...
...Hastings added, "This is the first time Bob has played with singers, and he's a little nervous...
...I've never played in front of anybody...
...I'm very busy this time of year, and I have an invalid mother to care for...
...Mrs...
...I always say you can't swallow the whole apple in one bite...
...When my nemesis, Cecil Harper, went blank midway through his piece, I felt benevolent enough to refrain from sticking out my tongue...
...Hastings, but I must leave to deliver a baby...
...The poor are well represented, hurt particularly by the new economic conditions of Tudor times: the enclosures of old common land and the end of the charity of the monasteries...
...Crowded into Mrs...
...she must develop self-discipline and confidence...
...in my last hundred rehearsals I executed it flawlessly...
...All the mothers bring cakes...
...Holy Week ceremonies in Ayacucho conclude with a triumphant dawn procession of the Resurrected Christ...
...Nevertheless, Nunn goes wrong when he fashions Jane into a Tudor social reformer...
...She sure takes this thing seriously...
...Hastings wouldn't hear of it...
...But my chuckle lacked spontaneity...
...By 9:00 I had accidentally memorized "We Three Kings" and discovered the exhilaration of freedom through discipline...
...Mrs...
...Feckenham, Mary Tudor's Jesuit confessor, on points of biblical interpretation...
...what you get is twentieth-century people tarted up in antique costumes, with a plot that hybrids swashbuckling and the sexual hijinks of a nighttime soap opera -- Dynasty Down Through the Ages...
...Writing some new deadline on the calendar, she asked what "cake" meant...
...Hastings...
...You spoil him...
...Thus I became again as a little child, addressing myself to such compositions as "Going to the Circus," "Skipping Rope," and the traditional scale exercises in Hanon's venerable primer, The Virtuoso Pianist...
...Mrs...
...They all asked, "Are you one of the performers...
...I rearranged my holiday schedule...
...Like so many historical films, Lady Jane employs pageantry, costume, and location to re-create the Tudor past...
...Three days later we were planning an intimate supper enhanced by Chateauneuf-du-Pape when the telephone rang...
...Nunn stages her first appearance to underscore these traits...
...Hastings did...
...What Nunn Commonweal: 84...
...You have a month to memorize this piece...
...she exclaimed...
...Either the kid was a veritable Mozart or Mrs...
...Don't worry," she consoled me, "you'll do much better at the Christmas Recital...
...When I sat upon the bench, I imitated Van Cliburn's extravagant gestures at the Moscow Music Festival...
...THE PITFALLS & TRI JMPH OF ADULT EDIJCATION I/,The virtuoso pianist ROBERT H. BELL necessary...
...As usual when I am panic-stricken, I hammed it up pretty outrageously...
...Hastings...
...I bought Mrs...
...Moreover, once married, Nunn claims that Jane and her spouse fell deeply in love...
...Soon the dread moment was at hand: "And now Bob will play 'We Three Kings.' " As I moved tentatively toward the piano, a beeper went off and Dr...
...Hastings instructed me...
...I somehow clumped out a facsimile of "The Happy Fisherman...
...The church must be servant to such a Spirit...
...Carter (only eighteen herself) makes Jane authentic by passionately arguing against transubstantiation...
...The spirit of history is more evasive, but is magnificently brought to life in Lady Jane by the acting of an English' ingtnue named Helena Bonham Carter...
...That lady is the Ahab of piano teachers...
...Suddenly I lost track of myself, and the chorus lurched home toward "the perfect light" without benefit of an accompanist...
...Hastings, what we have here is a generatip nal gap...
...Perhaps I could pay one of my students to call me ("Paging Dr...
...Cecil Harper, who had been studying only six weeks, would also perform "The Happy Commonweal: 82Fisherman...
...Emergency call...
...She had transformed a bumbling idiot into a polished performer...
...T HE MORNING of the Christmas recital dawned brightly...
...Cissy was comatose, and I disguised my terror with wisecracks ("My piece is entitled Bagatelle for piano, flute, and oboe, without piano...
...Hastings distributed presents: neatly wrapped packages of three #2 Herald Square pencils...
...Cecil Harper, the little monster, was playing "We Three Kings" without looking at the keyboard...
...Hastings...
...I know because I awoke in a damp sweat at 5:30...
...His father spoils him...
...I botched "We Three Kings" only slightly, but since everybody was singing loudly, off pitch, and at random tempo, nobody minded...
...Worse, her efforts are presented in a ridiculously quixotic manner...
...When Timmy's mother anived, she received a dressing-down from Mrs...
...I think I'll make my Harvey Wallbanger cake," she declared...
...Hastings's living room that evening were about twenty-five people and at least ten cakes...
...After we finished the music and devoured the cakes, Mrs...
...What a splendid teacher...
...I'11 say...
...Rand had introduced himself as an allergist...
...Bell...
...9 "o~ 14 February 1986:83Hastings, arrayed in a gorgeous Oriental dress, looked radiant...
...That's it...
...But director Trevor Nunn, the head of the Royal Shakespeare Company with the populist instinct to create Cats and Nicholas Nickleby, sagely provides a guide early in the film, when a conniving English nobleman neatly maps out the alternatives on a parchment scroll...
...Most of the film was shot in castles little changed from the sixteenth century, such as at Dover, here a stand-in for the old look of the Tower of London...
...Hence the pleasure of a film like 1967's A Man for All Seasons which actually forged historical re-creation and moving drama into an aesthetic whole...
...Hastings had hired an accomplished dwarf to mortify me...
...More seriously, Nunn exaggerates two elements in Jane's private life: her relationship with her parents and her marriage...
...This view provides a good corrective to those history films that leave out real people for those best dressed...
...My wife, having finished her semester's work, was in a sprightly mood at lunch...
...My Mozart went swimmingly but Timmy and I didn't finish our duet in unison...
...A below middle C." I hit another wrong note...
...Nunn avoids the slightest trace of con~[escension in portraying their fervor;, he also performs the neat trick of presenting Mary sympathetically...
...I sure hope I've got my lesson right today," I jested...
...Some of the best scenes involve confrontations between Jane and Mary, played by Jane Lapotaire, star of the RSC and Broadway's Piaf...
...The situation had become ominous...
...You don't know how disappointed a little boy can be," she confided...
...Hastings a fine box of candies and inscribed it warmly...
...to write down "Christmas Recital on December 17...
...humor on National Public Radio...
...Timmy and I shared a moment of silent commun~-a ~-...x ~,,,,,, ion, two hapless victims of oppression...
...Without a family tree, one is bound to get lost in Tudor politics...
...The process is...
...Hastings said firmly, "A below middle C." I hit a note...
...And get your hair cut...
...I arrived thirty minutes late...
...Within three weeks I had progressed to "The Happy Fisherman...
...I strode to the piano like Gary Cooper heading for the showdown in High Noon...
...Do you know what I call this lesson...
...Jane's reading of the Phaedo (the passage describing the soul taking flight from the prison house of the body) is also expertly carried through the film as a register of how genuinely Jane felt her faith...
...What party...
...and I nodded modestly, enjoying my celebrity...
...In some comical, but compelling scenes, we see him learn respect for her propriety and Jane learn to direct (and delight in) his mischief...
...I cannot tell my wife to bake a cake for my piano recital -certainly not now, when she is swamped with work...
...Meanwhile the other grownups, Cissey Caffrey and I, awaited our calls in states resembling clinical shock...
...Gee, I don't know, Mrs...
...While Cissey was hammering out a perfect version of "O Come All Ye Faithful," I envied Dr...
...But its real distinction is in catching the emotional flavor of the past to reproduce the seriousness with which subtle religious issues were taken in previous eras...
...Cissey somehow survived her ordeal, delivering a rather catatonic Bach fugue...
...You know what Mrs...
...Through this device Nunn, here making his screen debut, is able to translate the basic facts without a hitch...
...the actual thrashing, although remarkable filmmaking, is uncertain history...
...She forgets we have lives to lead...
...Obviously he was setting us up for triplets just before curtain on Friday...
...All too soon I had to perform "The Happy Fisherman" at Mrs...
...Nunn's economics have more to do with satirizing Margaret Thatcher than celebrating Jane Grey...
...Have her bring a cake to the party...
...It was refreshing to see the topic taken seriously, especially when Ms...
...We've already changed our whole vacation for her silly party...
...Hastings...
...Hastings's prodding became more specific: "There, it's right under your third f i n g e r . . . No, third finger left hand...
...Timmy has been working on that duet since October...
...A FEW MONTHS after beginning piano lessons as an adult, I changed teachers...
...He needs discipline...
...As she introduced me to her friends, she beamed...
...The emphasis she placed upon "discipline" suggested that the parents should begin with flogging and get tough if Ill I I ROBERT H. BELL teaches English at Williams College, and airs his...
...All right, Bob, we will work more on that one...
...Rand declared with carefully contrived gravity, "I'm very sorry, Mrs...
...There were seven pianists at the recital -- four children lacking discipline and three adults craving sedatives...
...Hastings told me...
...An undergraduate needs a metaphor explicated immediately...
...We were flat out of valium, my wife had to bake a cake, and I was fated to make an ass of myself in front of forty or fifty people...
...At the end he stuck out his tongue at me...
...There were several discernible snickers...
...Certainly, Mrs...
...It's become mystical...
...There is simply no historical evidence that Jane tried anything of the sort...
...At the tempo I played it, it was more like a funeral march for the Happy Fisherman...
...I had forgotten the pre-recital rehearsal...
...If you practice so poorly next week, I will really become cross ! ' ' She already sounded pretty cross to me...
...It concerns the story of Jane Grey, niece of Henry VIII, who was placed on the throne after the death of his son Edward VI as a Protestant alternative to Mary Tudor...
...I don't know what she had you doing," she humphed in her genteel Virginia accent...
...For the benefit of the chorus, Mrs...
...The Spirit must be allowed to emerge from within the culture, the history, and the folk piety of the very people of Ayacucho...
...Cissey, if you don't come, I'll moider youse...
...Clutching my pencils and my carols, I departed, joyful and triumphant, having bridged the awful chasm between myself and the music of the spheres...
...Indeed, such historical films are more often found on TV lately -- witness the atrocity on the civil war, North and South...
...I I II I Screen I I SPIRIT OF HISTORY LADY JANE & REVOLUTION I LOVE HISTORY but often hate historical films...
...Hastings's fall recital...
...Hastings had organized the performers and carolers with the rigorous precision of an experienced martinet...
...I call it a terrible lesson...
...My wife and I wanted to visit our parents the week before Christmas, but Mrs...
...still, she impressed her age by a mixture of intellect, spirituality, and courage...
...I've come back to Lima to pray...
...E ARLY in November, before I had time to collect the tattered remnants of my self-esteem, Mrs...
...After the rehearsal, Cissey Caffrey said to me, "I may not be back from a business trip to Hartford on Friday...
...The first adult pianist was Dr...
...You should memorize this piece for the party," Mrs...
...My wife and I have the kind of complicated dualcareer marriage you read about in New York Magazine...
...She had probably invited her whole coven...
...Rand didn't have time to memorize his whole piece adequately...
...I looked vainly for Cissey Cafhey...
...Unfortunately, I was unable to find the first note...
...I had completed the first line of my carol without mishap when I recalled that Dr...
...Jane Grey was only sixteen when she became a pawn in a dynastic struggle...
...Too often, historical re-creation is equated with mere physical recreation...
...According to the film, her nine-day reign featured brave attempts to end exploitation, stop inflation, and provide for a "real shilling...
...Nunn's use and grasp of history both pleases and periodically annoys...
...Not only had A below middle C mysteriously disappeared, but I couldn't locate middle C, although I remembered it was around the middle of the keyboard...
...How are you ' doing, Timmy...
...Ah . . . under duress...
...Are you crazy...
...Rand...
...Rand and Cissey Caffrey...
...How goes the revolution...
...I spent an anxious forty-five minutes wondering how to inform my wife and wrote cake in tiny letters on our calendar for December 16...
...Fine...
...Hastings would beat you to the punch...
Vol. 113 • February 1986 • No. 3
