That is a long time ago! I hear someone yell behind me as I leave the Concertgebouw. I look around and recognize an old friend. “Did you enjoy playing?” she asks, pointing to my viola box. After a cooking course we visited together two years ago, we lost touch. Now, after some hesitation, we just fall into each other’s arms and meet at her home.
Two days later I enter her home, the heart of which is the lavishly decorated kitchen with plants. We laugh like we used to and she proudly talks about her own ‘culi-oasis’ in a shopping center. Then she beckons me to the elegantly set kitchen table. “I cooked for you”, she surprises me. And she also switches on a streaming of my last concert. Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony flows between us like a warm sauce and completely steals my attention. On my plate, the trout eggs on the cauliflower puree instantly transform into the notes of the theme. I put my fork in rhythmically, taste, but the subsequent viola phrases prevent the awakening of my taste buds. My fingertips are already playing on the handle of the cutlery. Slightly ashamed I let her talk. Uninhibitedly, she pours me water at the moment when the violas imitate a babbling brook of the second movement and while a fine network of motifs plays on me, my tongue goes numb.
She comes with the main course. I don’t let myself be known and cut the orange-filled quail as the bird cadence kicks in: nightingale, quail and cuckoo sounds explicitly attack me and I freeze again. Careful that my movements are not limited to four-four time, I shift my chair. The Scherzo begins, but when Beethoven suddenly obscures the cheerfulness with a minor minor, I put my fork down. She frowns, and I understand that I must avoid disharmony between us before Beethoven’s storm starts.
Seven bars later I finally admit it: listen, I love Beethoven, but like him, I’m not very good at music at the table. With a click she stops the music. My taste suddenly returns and I am back at the table and not at work. Glad I finally taste something again, I hear her say: luckily you are allergic to music and not to my food.
Ewa Maria Wagner is a violist and writer.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC on the morning of January 25, 2022