Not long afterwards.
Another night alone with books and the wireless for company.
Leafing through the Radio Times, he turned to the BBC’s venture into high art, the Third Programme. It had been going a couple of years now. Almost since the end of the war. He doubted anyone would have found time or inclination during the war for a station devoted to classical music and talk so arch it was sleep inducing at best and bloody irritating at worst. Up against Kenneth Horne, Arthur Askey, Tommy Handley, and a bunch of catchphrases that had never struck Troy as remotely funny, it would not have stood a chance. But tonight, at seven thirty p.m., just minutes away, the BBC were doing their bit for Viktor Rosen. God knows, Troy thought, Rosen had done enough for them.
He turned on the set, watched the unfailingly pleasing glow on the Bakelite grill as the valves warmed up, and tuned to the Third.
“We come now to a recording made last winter in the Kleine Zaal of the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. It’s broadcast in memory of Viktor Rosen who died last month, and features Rosen on piano accompanied by Méret Voytek on cello, playing Debussy’s Sonata for Cello and Piano in D-minor, op. 58. This piece, together with Debussy’s Suite Bergamesque for solo piano, comprised the second half of the concert. It was recorded on February fourteenth.”
The usual coughs and shufflings followed. A round of applause. The players took the stage. Silence. One recalcitrant cougher. A tweak and a scratch or two of the bow as Voytek tuned a string. Troy dashed to the piano, searched hurriedly among the sheet music littering the top and retrieved the score of the sonata just as Viktor struck the first chord. He’d no idea why he had this particular score—he didn’t know any cellists he could play with—he wished he did—but he had and it would be fun to follow the score as they played.
Fun and an education. At the end of the first page, Troy found himself reaching for a pencil and trying to note the variations . . . the ways in which Viktor and Voytek deviated from the “script.” It didn’t ruin the piece, it was nothing if not subtle, but he could not see/hear what it added. It was as though they were overinterpreting, almost improvising . . . but to what end?
And then he realized what the relationship had been between Viktor Rosen and André Skolnik.