It’s the fifth time today that I’ve typed into my phone the string of numbers next to my cello friend Tanya’s smiling face. I’m waiting for the +380 country code to be picked up. The low ‘berry’ pierces my ear. I hope to hear her melodious alto, but again a machine voice prompts me – first in Ukrainian then in English – to leave a message. Desperately I speak for the fifth time and switch to WhatsApp. Although I have already left dozens of green balloons full of requests, my inquiry remains unanswered.
The lunch break is over. Distressed that there are explosions instead of music some two thousand miles east of our studio, my colleagues and I walk back to the music desks, in our hands, thank God, instruments, not weapons. It’s been a long time since I felt more like an insignificant person than a musician. Hoping that the fourth symphony of Carl Nielsen, The Unquenchablemay my powerlessness soften, I raise my viola. But here the sharps and the flats quarrel, the rhythm soon resembles a regime and the struggle on the staff, however abstract, keeps asking me about Tanya. My right thumb cramps on the slipper. Rather than phrasing, I fight the persistent TV images of her burning city in my head. What did Nielsen actually mean by ‘The unquenchable’?
I stay by mistake espresso play where senza vibrato stands. And even though I know the coldness of the metal strings under my fingertips has nothing in common with bare hands on a tank, the white notes in the lot continue to stare at me from their empty eye sockets.
The swelling boom of two timpani in a musical battle of titans draws my attention. I turn around. The physical exuberance of the timpani players, their lively gestures, unexpectedly dissolve something in me. Enchanted, I realize that Nielsen is not about the abstraction in music but about the unquenchable individual power of the will to live.
After the rehearsal, with my viola still in hand, I switch on my mobile phone. Impatiently I tap through all the icons. No voicemail, no news. Nielsen still rattles between my ears when I leave the studio. On the stairs, a familiar WhatsApp sound makes my heart jump. I watch. In the street I start to sob, Tanya is alive.
Ewa Maria Wagner is a violist and writer.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC on the morning of March 8, 2022