A memory of Elegy by Faure

One more trifle of memory in young days.

When I finished the early residency at a med school here, I returned to mother school for research work in immunogenetics for a few years. On weekdays, I stayed at my parents' home and, later, at a small apartment close to the lab. I went back to home in Tochigi in weekends. Sometimes, I have drove back to home on my car. Late at Saturday evening, I always ran on a fixed route. Whenever I went through the northern border of Tokyo abutting on Saitama through a big river, I felt I had been there in the past. Late at night, the area was covered with darkness. There were high buildings of apartment on the other side. Only street lights at regular interval were looming up the street and the adjascent area. 

In some time, I remembered having been the area in my school days. I have visited a piano teacher with the pianist friend U. U was showing our performance of Elegy by Faure to him in her lesson. I can't remember what season it was but it was surely cool evening. Feeling so tense, I was getting out of the exit of a subway station, bringing cello on shoulder. It was U's usual lesson. I can't remember what I was told by him at all. 

Several weeks ago, I happened to make correspondence with U and asked her about that lesson. She told me it was Hanaoka, a post-graduate student of a famous art university. He later went to France and devoted hard to performance of piano there. He was awarded at a few concours there. He has become a professor of piano at a music university here.  

I was so nervous to go for that lesson but was still a bit proud of being chosen for a partner for the lesson by her. However, I wasn't yet confident at cello performance at all. I felt sorry for her because I had not been proficient at performance. I have been a kind of unconfidence guy at various things including playing cello. In the mail, I apologized her for that. 

She has not answered anything to that. She only let me know the teacher had praised my cello while she was only with him. It might be only a diplomatic words to me. If she had told anything to encourage me, I would have been saddened. But it was relieving me a lot that she told that without commenting on my cello skill etc. I felt of her considerateness in just delivering the teacher's words to me. 

Faure's Elegy is a famous piece for cellists. It is a work of romanticism hued with sentimentalism in youth. I have played it at a few occasions before audience ever since. No chance to play it with U any longer. Talking of the episode of her lesson, however, I felt this little bitter memory had turned a warm one in my mind. All thanks to U. This is a performance of this piece by Krijgh. The performance advances steadily until it reaches the theme reproduced in an octave higher than the beginning. Creative and excellent performance.