Sight Reading Read Free Page B

suburban Ohio, standing there reading from sheet music propped on a folding metal stand.
    She knew then, if without the words to express it, that what she was studying was not simply music but beauty, and that she wanted to inhabit, completely, that beauty—and that this was something quite different from the jaunty flutist tapping her foot to the music.
    THE NEW CONDUCTOR’S NAME WAS Nicholas Elko.
    At their next rehearsal, Lynn told Remy all sorts of things about him—that he was thirty-one years old, that he had been a guest conductor in Budapest and at the London Sinfonietta, that he composed as well as conducted. Since she was concertmistress, she had made a point of introducing herself and, she told Remy, found out about him from her mother (a music teacher who had a hand in all of her daughter’s professional affairs). Lynn, a prodigy, was the youngest student in the conservatory and still lived at home with her parents—which Remy supposed offset, somewhat, the honor of being first chair.
    Until this past autumn, first chair had gone to Albert Kim, one class ahead of Remy. Albert had perfectly even fingers and the composure of a sunset, and it had been a pleasure to witness up close the way he brought an instrument to life. Yet Remy had looked forward to the year that Albert would graduate, when she would take his place. And then, just when the time had finally come, Lynn Swenson arrived.
    Fifteen years old, with long, gawky limbs and a straight orange bob, Lynn probably weighed at most ninety pounds, but when she drew her bow across the strings her gangliness transformed into beauty and sound. It wasn’t just her impeccable technique; it was her daring, her nerve, an inventiveness that made even the most familiar moments sound new. Remy had tried to figure out exactly how the transformation occurred, but it was like trying to decipher the work of a magician whose sleight of hand is too quick for the naked eye.
    And so it was with understanding as well as awe that Remy had stepped aside, while Lynn justly claimed first chair. When Lynn played her Scheherazade solos, Remy watched her shifts and slides, and admired her strong vibrato (which started at her wrist rather than her fingers) and where she had come up with smoother fingerings. She felt real affection, of an almost protective sort, for Lynn—who after all was doomed to spend her conservatory years with a mouthful of metal and few friends her age. Sometimes, as they played in perfect synchrony, it was as if the two of them became a single unit, sharing not just a conductor and music stand and the same notes on the same manuscript page, but also the internal experience of those things. Remy supposed it was the closest she would ever come to reading someone’s mind.
    â€œTurns out he’s a rising star,” Lynn lisped through her braces, explaining that Nicholas Elko had been awarded all sorts of prizes and commissions. “My mom says he’s a winner.”
    It was a phrase Remy disliked. After all, there could be only so many winners, and the path Remy had chosen was the sort that gradually narrowed the further you traveled, room for fewer and fewer along the way. At twenty-two Remy already knew this. Work in first-rate orchestras and chamber groups was a rare coup, and a solo career the exception, not the rule. Most students would end up pinch-hitting for this and that ensemble, supplementing their salaries by giving private lessons or playing quartets at weddings. Yet Remy had faith that if she worked hard enough she could make it to the top. She had applied for a postgraduate fellowship and was preparing to audition for a summer master class with Conrad Lesser. That was how these things went, step by reaching step, up a steep ladder.
    Mr. Elko had them start with the Sibelius again. Remy watched him not as she usually did, following a maestro’s cues, but as a physical being, the shapes his arms made before him,