When dreams come true

On the day I flew back to Italy from New York I stopped off in Brooklyn to have lunch with my son at a wonderful ramen restaurant near his house, ramen being something I'd been hungry for but hadn't had a chance to eat for many months. Then I headed to Kennedy and as usual got there ridiculously early. And I realized that I might as well realize a long-cherished fantasy of travel luxury: getting a manicure at an airport spa.

It was a pleasantly meditative experience and more reasonable, relative to real-world prices, than most airport food. Moreover, the polish is only now starting to look really ratty, two weeks out, and I'm cheered every time I notice my screaming scarlet nails.

Interestingly enough (to me, at least), red fingernails have a particular significance in the long friendship between me and Pam, my Fidenza co-conspirator and guardian angel. Many, many years ago, in another time, place, and psychological state, the two of us were part of an ensemble that performed a Mozart quartet in Carnegie Recital Hall. (Not Carnegie Hall, the little for-rent auditorium next door.) The day of the concert all of us were hideously nervous, and one way I soothed myself was to carefully varnish my nails bright red.

The rest of the group was disapproving when I turned up with my garish manicure. No one in our social circle ever painted her nails, including me. But to me that nail polish felt like a lucky talisman. I was playing viola, an inner voice instrument, while Pam was on violin, with a part that was far more challenging and much more exposed. In that moment of high anxiety my red nails seemed like a small way of transforming myself from the terrified screw-up I feared I was into the confident show-off I yearned to be.

In my memory our performance went smoothly, though not brilliantly. But Pam remembers that at some point during the proceedings she panicked and dropped out for a measure or two. Afterwards our cellist, of the four of us the most severely opposed to frivolity of any kind, opined that my nails were a deliberate effort to sabotage Pam's performance. Pam never believed I'd done something so malevolent, but she claims to still have a bit of a phobia about red nails.

I eventually abandoned the viola, which I'd taken up only grudgingly, and went back to what I really wanted to play, the violin. Over the years since then I've continued to play, at an amateur level but with tremendous pleasure. Meanwhile Pam switched in the other direction and took up the viola for a while; it turned out she'd envied me the viola as much as I'd envied her the violin. But then, under the pressure of work, family, and her dozens of other creative hobbies, she stopped playing. Twenty-five years went by.

One of the great joys of my California life is playing chamber music with a network of friends and acquaintances, from casual get-togethers sight-reading Haydn quartets to intensive workshops on the fine points of playing Milhaud and Shostakovich. Once Danny and I had more or less settled into the Fidenza half of our lives,  chamber music began to seem like a missing piece. I needed to build up an Italian musical network, and Pam and her dust-covered viola were an obvious place to start.

Pam adores music but at first she balked at the prospect of starting to play again. Even being away from a string instrument for a few weeks means your hands lose a little strength, the callouses on your fingertips start to soften, and you sound noticeably crappier than you did before you took the time off. She was certain that after 25 years whatever technique she'd had would be gone for good.

Her anxiety proved no match for my determination, however. I badgered her relentlessly to just come over for an hour, play easy duets with me, no practicing required. She succumbed and, even though at first her sound was indeed pretty rusty, as soon as she began to connect with the music her playing improved by leaps and bounds. "Just don't paint your nails," she joked.

Then my mom died and I had to go to New York, and while I was gone Pam retreated back into not playing. After I got my airport manicure I sent her a photo of my nails and the message, "Look out!"

I don't know if it was the manicure, the ripple in the continuum Pam and I had already created by playing together, or random luck, but soon after I returned to Fidenza chamber music suddenly flooded into my life. First, my friend Valerie put me in touch with Birgit, a Viennese violinist who was visiting Bologna (about an hour from here) for a few days and looking for folks to play with while she was in the area. Birgit recruited a Japanese cellist who lives in Milan and they met up with Pam and me at my apartment a week ago. We played Mozart and Haydn all afternoon and then had dinner together, and despite some bumpy musical moments we all had a great time.

Kazuhiko, me, Pam, and Birgit. Photo courtesy of Kazuhiko's wife, Maria.

At around the same time I heard from my friend Ornella, a pianist in Fidenza with whom I've occasionally played violin-piano sonatas. Ornella works a lot, is renovating an old farmhouse, and is caring for her mother, who's quite ill, so she has not been able to play with me since I was in Fidenza last summer. But she put me in touch with Luisa, a local cellist, whom I was not shy about wooing.

So a few days after our international quartet extravaganza I invited Luisa over to play trios with Pam and me. She turned out to be a strong player as well as a delightful new acquaintance--moreover, one who doesn't speak much English, and so provides another opportunity to practice Italian. And I noticed that the more Pam played, the more confident she became and the more beautiful she sounded. I was dizzyingly proud of all three of us.

The next day my friend Valerie arrived from her part-time home in Orvieto for a visit, bringing along her brand-new and very lovely Orvieto-made violin. On Friday she, Pam, Luisa, and I played Mozart, Haydn, and even an early Dvorak, and we sounded mostly terrific.

Danny took this photo while we were playing Dvorak.

The day after that--the day before yesterday--Valerie, Pam, and I got together again to sight-read terzetti by Fuchs and Dvorak for two violins and viola. It's a funny combination of instruments for which not much has been written, but these pieces were delightful.

I don't expect to keep up quite so intensive a pace going forward, especially since Valerie has now returned to Orvieto, so I no longer have an in-house violinist. But we already have a date to play piano quartets with Ornella, and more trios with Luisa are highly likely. Moreover Pam has thought of a few other musicians she knows who might like to join us.

Ploughing through the classical repertoire and struggling with problems of intonation, coordination, and ensemble might not sound like everyone's idea of a good time. But for some of us, amateur chamber music provides a whole buffet of pleasures. First is the stunning beauty of the music itself and the excitement of being part of making it. Also, a surge of communal "We did it!" elation happens whenever the group manages to stay together through a challenging passage or a tempo change. And you feel a personal champion-athlete electricity when you pull off a difficult run or get a high note in tune. I am incredibly lucky that this is something I am now getting to do on two continents.

While we were playing quartets the other night I also realized that my mom is responsible for much of the happiness I was feeling. An amateur cellist, she played music with friends all her life and she and I often played together, especially in recent years. Now I was carrying forward what she'd given me and feeling tremendous gratitude.

Dot (on cello) at a music workshop we attended in Vermont last year, shortly before she became ill.

I have not felt a lot of sorrow since she died, but last night I was sad that I couldn't call her up and tell her how my musical life in Fidenza has taken off. She would be so pleased. And so much more interested in all the fascinating, tedious details of it all than anybody else on the planet will ever be.

Meanwhile, Pam is thrilled to be playing chamber music again and admits that after all she isn't half bad, even after that long hiatus. She is not ready to give my red nails any credit for her success, however.