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| [The Perfectionist enters and moves to his studio chair.] | |
| PERFECTIONIST: | I am always amused by the assumption that it is somehow fraudulent to splice together a performance. That an artist's performance must always be the result of some unbroken forward thrust. Some sustained animus. Some ecstatic high. By my lights an ideal performance reveals deep musical structure as a pure emotional line. If this 'ideal performance' can be better achieved with illusion and fakery, I say more power to those who can work that magic. The Tel Aviv Piano: Take Two! [holding up two pieces of mag tape] Sand Dune. Beethoven. [whisper] We hold the beating heart of the music in our bare hands - |
| [He picks up a script, swivels in his chair and gestures to alter the lighting for dramatic effect. The Performer enters, in a kind of daze. The Prodigy moves to the piano. The Perfectionist 'conducts' their entries and exits throughout, following his script, mouthing key words. Music under: Beethoven's Sonata No 30, Opus 109.] | |
| PRODIGY: | I never listen to anything when I'm preparing to play Beethoven. Before Bach I listen to Strauss, Franck, Sibelius, juke boxes, anything. But nothing before Beethoven. I must go in like a horse with blinders. |
| PERFORMER: | That stupid pig of a piano ... |
| PRODIGY: | I always commit a new score to memory before I go to the keyboard to keep expressive manifestations divorced from the tactilia. I don't want my fingers telling my brain what to do. |
| PERFORMER: | I can't even remember what a real instrument feels like. |
| [He starts doing hand exercises to limber up the musculature of his fingers.] | |
| PRODIGY: | There is a moment in Opus 109 which is a positive horror - an upward-bound diatonic run in sixths. |
| PERFORMER: | Not even a C Scale properly. I've got to remember ... |
| PRODIGY: | It's an awkward moment not only in terms of black versus white note fingerings but also in terms of that break in the keyboard around two octaves above middle C - precisely the point where Mr Beethoven asks us to change from a pattern in sixths to a pattern in thirds. [demonstrating the riff] Sixths ... to this ... and you've got to do it in a split second. |
| PERFORMER: | ... find the moment somewhere ... get inside it. |
| [He tenses in on himself.] | |
| PRODIGY: | I had always heard this piece played by people who, when the moment of truth arrived, acted like horses in a burning barn - |
| PERFECTIONIST: | [cueing the Performer] The deep emotional line! |
| [The Performer does the 'taking flight' gesture.] | |
| PERFORMER: | Uptergrove! The Chickering! |
| PRODIGY: | A week before the concert I decided it was time to sit down and play the piece through for the first time. |
| [The Perfectionist conducts with building energy, vocalizing words and phrases when he can't control himself.] | |
| Suicidal, [with Perfectionist] but that's the way I always do things. [solo] The first thing I did, foolishly - very bad psychology - was to say: 'Well, let's try that tricky bit of fingering, [with Perfectionist] work out a little keyboard routine, just in case.' | |
| PERFORMER: | Light streams through the trees beyond the window ... hold and refine the mental image ... enter the time and space it occupies. Be there. |
| PRODIGY: | And as I began to work out my system one thing after another went wrong. Before many minutes had elapsed I'd developed a total mental block. [with building anxiety] I just froze at that particular moment. |
| PERFECTIONIST: | [cueing the Performer] The lame can walk! |
| PERFORMER: | I move toward the keyboard ... |
| PRODIGY: | I'm in the burning barn! |
| [The Performer recoils in shock, this is not what he came for.] | |
| PERFECTIONIST: | Stand by - |
| PRODIGY: | Then I tried the last resort method! |
| PERFORMER: | [trying to convince the Prodigy] ... the unheard music! |
| PERFECTIONIST: | [preparing to cue, under] Aaaaand - |
| PRODIGY: | [overlapping Perfectionist] I put a couple of radios on the piano and turned them up full blast! |
| PERFECTIONIST: | [cueing] GO! The charity of the machine! Ecstasy! |
| [The Prodigy and the Performer are transported. A unifying physical gesture. Ecstasy! Sound: complex radio overlay. Chunks of strange language hurtle by - BBC World Service. Radio Valpariso. A soccer game from Karachi. Snippets of martial music from the Soviet Bloc. Light shift. Another note from the ground bass.] |