And finally, Etude No. 12 in C minor, from Opus 10, by Frederic Chopin, usually called the "Revolutionary Etude." Marla paused for a long moment, as she always did before she played this one. Someone coughed in the silence, and Franz jumped. Finally, she raised her hands and attacked (the only word Franz could use) the keyboard. As with the very first time he heard it, he was astounded by the rolling arpeggios, the percussive chords, how the music seemed to emerge from chaos. He tore his eyes from Marla, and looked around. Everyone was transfixed by her electric performance of the piece. When the final chords were hammered home, the room rocked with wild applause, which Franz joined for a moment before slipping back up the wall and behind the dividers.
The amazing young woman stood at the end of the piece, and despite being in a gown, gave a bow to acknowledge the applause. After she walked behind the screen, there was a moment of quiet, then conversation erupted all over the room. Everyone who had a program was pointing at it, everyone who did not was either looking for one or was gesticulating in the air. They all seemed to understand the term Intermissio which lay between the piano and the voice music in the program. Some few of them had headed for the wine table with alacrity, and a few more were picking up the remaining tidbits from the buffet.
Girolamo turned to Il Prosperino. He said nothing; merely raised an eyebrow, as if to say, "I told you so."
Andrea nodded in response, acknowledging the point. "How soon can you make me a piano?"
Girolamo shrugged. "Perhaps a year."
"Why so long?" in a surprised tone.
"First, I must finish refurbishing the one I purchased, which is dedicated to a special patron. Despite what I have already learned, I will learn more by doing, which is a slow process. While that is going on, I must locate an iron foundry that can cast parts according to my specifications. Even more critically, I must find a reliable source of relatively fine gauge steel wire. Then, and only then, will I be able to begin crafting my own pianos." He thought for a moment. "I have a facility in Grantville, but I believe I will relocate to Magdeburg."
"You will not return to Rome?" Andrea eyed him with even more surprise.
"No. Even if the Casati family were to forgive my putting a sword through a son's shoulder, everything I have learned in the last few months tells me that the future is here," he waved his arm around, "here among these Germans."
Andrea shook his head.
"I mean it," insisted Girolamo. "You think what you have seen and heard tonight will not change our music?"
Josef and Rudolf joined hands with the others and said, "Do well," then slipped out the way Franz had come in. Franz, Marla, Isaac and Hermann looked at each other, no one wanting to say anything. Finally Franz laughed. "To quote our good friend Ingram Bledsoe, 'Knock 'em dead.' "
Franz turned Marla to face him, looked into her gleaming eyes. "Continue as you have begun. You have won them over, now seal it." He kissed her hands. "Go. They await you." She squeezed his hands and turned to follow Hermann.
Franz and Isaac slipped back down the wall behind the dividers, to emerge at the rear of the room and join their friends. The applause that greeted Marla resounded around them. The four of them stood together at the back, not able to see very well because many of the patrons were standing, but listening nonetheless.
Her butterflies were gone, Marla noticed. She was calm, now that she was finally getting to do what she had prepared all this time for, what she had always dreamed of. She turned her head to give a slight nod to Hermann. They began.
"Thy hand, Belinda…" The opening words of Dido's farewell recitative sounded in the room, and Mary closed her eyes and drank in the sound of that lovely voice. Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas had always been one of her favorite early operas, and the despairing recitative and aria where Dido realized that she had driven away her love and subsequently died never failed to grip her. It was a lovely choice by Marla, not just because it was from later in the seventeenth century and so would be easy for those present to relate to, but also because the classic story taken from Virgil's Aeneid was one that almost everyone in the room had heard before in many forms. Here was a fresh new form, and one of beauty, sung by one of the finest young sopranos she had ever heard.
"When I am laid, am laid in earth…" The aria began; Mary abandoned herself to the music, drifting with its rise and fall, until the final plaintive line, "Remember me, but oh, forget my fate."
The room was hushed. Someone at last broke the rapture and began to applaud. The room echoed with the sound for some time. Isaac and Rudolf nodded to the others before slipping back behind the screens to return to the head of the room. When the applause began to fade, they stepped out and joined Marla by the piano.
Hermann began an introduction, and soon Marla's voice was soaring again, this time with the beautiful melody of Mozart's "Laudate Dominum" from Vesperae Solennes de Confessore, K339. Mary remembered wondering if Marla knew what she was doing when the young woman told her that they were going to adapt this song, re-scoring the central section for a trio instead of a quartet. Now she didn't wonder, she just melted into the music and let that effortless soprano voice carry her along. Isaac's tenor and Rudolf's baritone added to the glory of it, but the solo ending, where Marla sang the final phrase, just was heavenly.
Once again the room was hushed. It took longer for someone to begin the applause this time, and it lasted longer. Marla, smiling, took a bow with both Isaac and Rudolf, and they exited.
The rest of the evening moved from one triumph to the next: "Rejoice Greatly, O Daughter of Zion" from Handel's Messiah was followed by "Senza Mamma" from Puccini's Suor Angelica. Each was received by great applause. Marla bowed, beaming.
Franz, knowing what was coming next, held his breath. If the audience would stumble over anything in the concert, it would be this piece. It had taken some little time to transpose it to a key that was at the same time low enough to retain some of the darkness of the original music, yet was high enough that Marla could sing it comfortably. They had finally achieved it two weeks ago, and Marla had diligently practiced it since then.
She opened her mouth, and sang.
"Wer reitet so spat durch Nacht und Wind?
Es ist der Vater mit seinem Kind;
Er hat den Knaben wohl in dem Arm,
Er fa?t ihn sicher, er halt ihn warm."
Franz could almost feel the temperature in the room drop as the opening verse of Goethe's poetry mated with Schubert's music in Der Erlkonig was revealed. The story of the father and son's ride home continued to unroll; shivers chased one another up his spine, and the hair on his neck began to bristle. Once again, Marla was bringing to a performance an indefinable something that he never heard during rehearsals. It was as if being in front of an audience raised her to a plane where her voice was a tool in the hands of God. He looked over at Isaac, to see him with his arms wrapped around himself. From the look on his face, he was feeling it too.
The song progressed. In each succeeding verse, the child grew more and more panicked at the sight of the pursuing Erlking, and the worried father tried to calm him, assuring him he was safe. The tension in the great room was building, more and more.
The last verse arrived, and Franz braced himself for the ending. Marla arrived at the final line, and declaimed:
"In seinen Armen das Kind…"
with a very pregnant pause, then
"war tot!"
Immediately applause broke out. Franz could see that this time it was led by none other than the very flamboyant gentleman standing with Signor Zenti. Whoever he was, he obviously liked that song, and to Franz's great relief was dragging everyone along with him. Marla was breathing deeply as she took her bow. Even after the applause died down she stood with her head down for several long breaths. Finally she straightened, smiled, and moved on to the penultimate section of the program.