Lara, seated in the audience, felt a thrill as she watched Philip walk out on the stage. There was a presence about him that was mesmerizing. I am going to marry him, Lara thought. I know it. She sat back in her seat and let his playing wash over her.
The recital was a triumph, and afterward the greenroom was packed. Philip had long ago learned to divide the crowd invited to the greenroom into two groups: the fans and other musicians. The fans were always enthusiastic. If the performance was a success, the congratulations of the other musicians were cordial. If it was a failure, their congratulations were very cordial.
Philip had many avid fans in Amsterdam, and on this particular evening the greenroom was crowded with them. He stood in the center of the room, smiling, signing autographs, and being patiently polite to a hundred strangers. Invariably someone would say, “Do you remember me?” And Philip would pretend to. “Your face looks so familiar…”
He remembered the story of Sir Thomas Beecham, who had hit upon a device to conceal his bad memory. When someone asked, “Do you remember me?” the great conductor would reply, “Of course, I do! How are you, and how is your father, and what is he doing?” The device worked well until a concert in London when a young woman in the greenroom said, “Your performance was wonderful, Maestro. Do you remember me?” and Beecham gallantly replied, “Of course, I do, my dear. How is your father, and what is he doing?” The young woman said, “Father is fine, thank you. And he’s still king of England.”
Philip was busily signing autographs, listening to the familiar phrases—“You made Brahms come alive for me!”…“I can’t tell you how moved I was!”…“I have all your albums”…“Would you sign an autograph for my mother too? She’s your biggest fan…”—when something made him look up. Lara was standing in the doorway, watching. His eyes widened in surprise. “Excuse me.”
He made his way over to her and took her hand. “What a wonderful surprise! What are you doing in Amsterdam?”
Careful, Lara. “I had some business to attend to here, and when I heard you were giving a recital, I had to come.” That was innocent enough. “You were wonderful, Philip.”
“Thank you…I…” He stopped to sign another autograph. “Look, if you’re free for supper…”
“I’m free,” Lara said quickly.
They had supper at the Bali restaurant on Leidsestraat. As they entered the restaurant, the patrons rose and applauded. In the United States, Lara thought, the excitement would have been for me. But she felt a warm glow, simply being at Philip’s side.
“It’s a great honor to have you with us, Mr. Adler,” the maître d’ said as he led them to their table.
“Thank you.”
As they were being seated, Lara looked around at all the people staring admiringly at Philip. “They really love you, don’t they?”
He shook his head. “It’s the music they love. I’m just the messenger. I learned that a long time ago. When I was very young and perhaps a little arrogant, I gave a concert, and when I had finished my solo, there was tremendous applause, and I was bowing to the audience and smugly smiling at them, and the conductor turned to the audience and held up the score over his head to remind everyone that they were really applauding Mozart. It’s a lesson I’ve never forgotten.”
“Don’t you ever get tired of playing the same music over and over, night after night?”
“No, because no two recitals are the same. The music may be the same, but the conductor is different, and the orchestra is different.”
They ordered a rijsttafel dinner, and Philip said, “We try to make each recital perfect, but there’s no such thing as a completely successful one because we’re dealing with music that is always better than we are. We have to rethink the music each time in order to recreate the sound of the composer.”
“You’re never satisfied?”
“Never. Each composer has his own distinctive sound. Whether it’s Debussy, Brahms, Haydn, Beethoven…our goal is to capture that particular sound.”
Supper arrived. The rijsttafel was an Indonesian feast, consisting of twenty-one courses, including a variety of meats, fish, chicken, noodles, and two desserts.