The Soloist Read Online Free Page A

appointment for jury duty began, I received a letter from an elementary-school music teacher down in Long Beach. Mr. Ralph Douglas wrote to inform me that “… because of your stature, I feel you are the right person to contact with regard to a musical genius I have discovered.”
    I got a perverse kick out of the reference to my stature, since I’m five-six.
    “Kyung-hee Kim is only nine years old, but he is nothing less than a giant,” Mr. Douglas gushed, pursuing the size theme. “He is musical, he can sight-read any piece of music you give him regardless of the difficulty, and he has a huge sound! I discovered him two years ago by accident. I needed members for the school orchestra, so I passed out a few instruments in my regular music class to see if anybody would get interested. Kyung-hee was last in line, and all I had left were a triangle and a cello. How lucky for us that he did not choose the triangle! I have been giving him lessons for only two years, but already he sounds like a professional! Eventhough I’m not a cellist myself, I confidently predict that Kyung-hee will be the next Rostopovitch [
sic
].”
    Well.
    Right away I suspected that this was a mildly talented boy judged through the ears of a wildly enthusiastic school-band instructor. If the boy had a real gift, it would almost certainly have been recognized by someone other than Ralph by now. Why hadn’t the boy’s parents—or Mr. Douglas, for that matter—found a real cello teacher for him by this time? And finally, though it was a small point, I wondered how seriously we could take Mr. Douglas’s prediction with regard to Rostropovitch if he couldn’t even spell the cellist’s name properly.
    I wrote Mr. Douglas back and thanked him for his letter, but explained that I taught only through the university, except for master classes every other summer at Tanglewood. A few days later, however, I received a telephone call from a woman who identified herself as Kyung-hee’s mother. Her English was extremely limited, but she managed to say—loudly—that I was the only teacher she wanted for her son, and that once I heard him play I would change my mind.
    I politely explained to her that my schedule would not permit it, but either she was not to be discouraged or she didn’t understand what I said. “What time Kyung-hee come your house?” When I said that I simply wasn’t interested in teaching children, she didn’t say anything.
    “Hello?” I asked, wondering if we had been disconnected.
    “Yes?” she asked. “What time?”
    Annoyed as I was, I remembered hearing my mother plead over the phone with a conductor to grant me an audition in his hotel room. It had embarrassed me terribly, but it had worked; he eventually gave in. I played while he ate hisroom-service breakfast and I went on to solo with his orchestra. That concert turned out to be the one that really got my career started. Thinking about this weakened my resistance, so I told Mrs. Kim I would hear her son, but with the understanding that it would be just for a few minutes. I really don’t know why I gave in, for I felt that even if he was talented, I wouldn’t be the right person for him anyway. I just hoped he wouldn’t be an absolute disaster. My nightmare was that not only would he be a perfectly ordinary nine-year-old cellist, but when I had to say I couldn’t teach him the mother wouldn’t take no for an answer. If the boy did have something, I planned to send him on to Laura Kantor. She’d been working with several young cellists and I’d heard they were coming along well. I couldn’t imagine how she did it, though; I felt uncomfortable around children even under the best of conditions. I could never figure out how to talk to them without either seeming condescending or hurting their feelings by talking over their heads. When I was a kid I used to despise it when adults would patronize me, but as soon as I grew up I found myself doing the same thing and