"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Except the Music" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

just for her. Her gaze met his, and he looked away. He wondered how he had ever found her attractive.

He followed the musicians out a second time, and kept going. Even if there was going to be a third bow,
or an encore, he would not be part of it.

She had shattered the illusion for him, made him remember what he hated about performance, and it
saddened him.

The whole festival saddened him.

He was beginning to think he had lost his heart.
****
Max avoided her that night, but he knew that he might have to speak to her over the next few weeks. In
particular, he worried about the next two concerts. One was an informal "encounter" in which Otto
spread his expertise to the audience as if they were students who had never heard of classical music
before. Most festivals had a version of this, the free afternoon session that existed to drum up ticket sales
for the next night's performance.

The North County Music Festival had been sold out for weeks. The encounters really weren't
necessary--to anyone except Otto. He claimed he lived for them, and indeed, he seemed to have more
energy than usual when he bounded onto the stage, rubbing his hands together as he enthusiastically
explained the motifs of the following night's Bartók.

Max's job at the encounters was to accompany the soloist, Penelope, who had to sing little snippets of a
cantata, and to illustrate Otto's sometimes esoteric points, using the music before him to illuminate the
melody or the melodic inversion or the composer's little in-jokes.

Max hated these sessions more than anything: He didn't like wooing the audience. They made him feel
self-conscious. On these afternoons, he felt like a pianist for hire, not an artist. Anyone could do this part
of the job, so long as they'd had enough keyboard training to sight-read the classics.

He was sitting on the piano bench, staring at the Bartók score, trying to pay enough attention to Otto's
lecture to catch his cue, when he realized that Otto had stopped speaking.

For a moment, Max froze, wondering if he had missed his entrance. But he had done that in the past, and
Otto had laughed at him, or tapped him on the shoulder, or made some joke about musicians living in
their own worlds.

But Otto said nothing. Max turned toward the audience, saw Otto clutching one hand to his throat.
Penelope took a step toward him, but Otto held up one imperious finger, warning her away. Maria, the
board chair, ran toward the back, grabbed a bottle of water, opening it as she brought it to the stage.

Otto took it like a man dying of thirst, guzzled the contents, set the bottle down and shuddered. Max
didn't move. Otto was old, but he was a bear of a man, a pillar of the musical community, one of the
foundations of the earth. Nothing could happen to Otto.

Nothing would dare.

Then Otto coughed, turned toward the musicians and grinned, and said to the crowd, "Now you
understand the drama of silence. How composers use it for effect...."