The Soloist Read Free

to hear me play as an adult. Music critics, music lovers, conductors, my teacher and, most of all, my mother joined this chorus, telling me over and over again that playing the way I did as a teenager meant that as long as I kept working hard adulthood would soon bestow upon me emotional qualities that would make me the premier cellist of my generation, if not the century. For this reason, and because I wanted so badly to choose my own friends and have a romantic life, I could hardly wait to get older.
    My life changed course abruptly when I was eighteen. My mother and I had returned to Poughkeepsie by then; Professor von Kempen had had his final stroke and passed away the year before. At his memorial service I had not let myself cry; I believed that he would have wanted me to show restraint. Also, I hoped that if I acted like a grown man I would hasten the process of maturity that was going to make me a finished product, a master cellist rather than a child prodigy, the maestro’s true successor rather than his potential heir. I knew that he believed my success would restore validity to his life’s work. Less than a year later, however, while preparing for aconcert tour through South America, I started to notice what appeared to be a hearing problem that affected my sense of pitch. I made it through that tour but with great difficulty, and for the first time in my life I received mixed reviews. Within a few months the problem became so acute that I could barely play at all.
    My natural gift for intonation turned against me. My ear began to examine each note so intensely that even a variation of a single cycle in pitch bothered me. Not even I could play with that kind of acoustic precision, which made it nearly impossible for me to concentrate on the melodic line, and as a result my playing became fragmented and weak. Concerts became interminable humiliations instead of being euphoric experiences for me.
    Eventually I had to cancel all of my engagements, many of which had been organized years in advance. It was an enormous inconvenience for the halls and orchestras, and it put me in a terrible position. At an age when most young men and women feel their lives are just beginning, I felt mine had ended. I wanted to disappear completely, and for all practical purposes I did. I lived at home with my parents until I was twenty-four, practicing obsessively and thinking of nothing else but overcoming my musical problem. Having once been able to sing through that magnificent animal the cello, with all the power and freedom it gave me, I couldn’t imagine living without that ability.
    I was terribly lonely, but I felt unwilling or unable to establish new relationships with anyone until my gift came back. To use my mother’s analogy, my stock had plummeted to such depths that I couldn’t possibly cash it in at such a loss; I was stuck. I didn’t feel like a real person during this period; I didn’t resemble the person I saw myself to be. I felt like aghost, or an image in a distorted mirror, and I didn’t know how to present myself to others. I yearned for an intimate relationship with someone, but felt especially self-conscious and disappointed with myself around women. The women I was attracted to, I assumed, would not want to associate with a failed musician.
    Meanwhile, I had come to resent my mother for isolating me from other young people and for giving me such an exaggerated sense of entitlement. I also resented my father for letting my mother do it; once she had convinced herself that cultivating my talent was a religious duty, he had largely withdrawn from the issue of my upbringing. Living at home with them allowed me to practice with relatively few distractions, but eventually I became convinced that the only way I could find my voice again was by building a whole new life for myself, this time without anyone else telling me what to do. So I moved to Los Angeles, where the music department of a large university