You need polish, refinement, the ability to navigate complex social dynamics. You need to understand the culture of classical music which is built on centuries of European tradition built on centuries of gatekeeping. You mean interrupted another voice. This time it was a younger woman perhaps 30 with sharp features and sharper eyes.
I'm Jessica Huang, arts critic for The New York Times. Mr. Harrington, I've reviewed 17 of your performances over the past five years and they've all been technically brilliant. But you want to know what I thought watching this kid play? I thought, when was the last time Harrington made me actually feel something?
The crowd gasped. You didn't openly criticize Vincent Harrington to his face. Not if you wanted to maintain access to the upper echelons of New York's classical music scene. Harrington's face had gone very pale, then very red.
I'm sorry you found my performances lacking in emotion, Miss Huang. Perhaps your expectations have been calibrated by the sort of melodramatic showmanship that passes for artistry in popular culture. Or perhaps, Dr. Crawford interjected, emotion is exactly what classical music needs right now. We've spent decades making it so rarified, so untouchable that we've driven away entire generations of potential listeners.
Meanwhile, we wonder why concert halls are dying and orchestras are going bankrupt. This is absurd, Harrington snapped. We're not going to lower our standards just to appeal to mass audiences. Classical music is meant to be challenging, sophisticated.
It's meant to be universal, Marcus said quietly. Everyone turned to look at him. He'd been standing silently near the piano, watching this debate rage around him like he was in the eye of a hurricane. Now he stepped forward, his voice small but clear.
When Beethoven wrote music, he didn't write it just for rich people, Marcus continued. He wrote it for everyone. That's why his ninth symphony uses Ode to Joy, a poem about all of humanity being brothers. When Chopin wrote his Revolutionary Étude, he wasn't thinking about concert halls.
He was thinking about his country being destroyed. Music is supposed to speak to people to make them feel things. The minute you make it only for certain people, you've killed what makes it special. You're fourteen years old, Harrington said coldly.
You have no idea what you're talking about. Maybe not about everything, Marcus agreed. But I know how music makes me feel. I know that when I play, I'm not trying to show off or prove I'm better than anyone.
I'm trying to communicate something that I can't say with words. And I think that's what the great composers wanted too. The great composers, Harrington said with exaggerated patience, were products of their time and culture. They studied for years under masters.
They had access to the finest instruments, the best education, the cultural milieu that allowed their genius to flourish. You cannot separate the art from the conditions that created it. But sir, Marcus said, isn't that the point? Even though they came from that world, their music transcended it. Bach was a church organist in a small German town, but his music speaks to people everywhere.
Mozart was Austrian, but Japanese kids study his compositions. Music doesn't care where you're from or what you look like. It just is. For a long moment, Harrington didn't respond.