Chapter 250

Translator: Dreamscribe

Warsaw Philharmonic Hall (Filharmonia Narodowa).

Opened in 1901, this hall was a stage that classical musicians from around the world dreamed of standing on at least once in their lives.

Today marked the pinnacle of the festival that came around once every five years, the opening day of the Final Round of the Chopin International Piano Competition.

A piano gleamed beneath the golden lights.

The final judging would be based on performances with the orchestra. Here and there, the musicians tuned their instruments while the murmur of quiet conversation drifted through the hall.

The Committee Members sat in the center of the audience, waiting for the performances to begin.

“All the performers we expected made it through. You seemed to rate Han Gyeo-ul particularly highly. Do you still feel the same way?”

Committee Chairman Jan Kobylski adjusted his glasses as he asked Maria.

Maria Kwiatkowska, a Polish pianist and a legend who had conquered both the Chopin Competition and the Queen Elisabeth Competition, gazed wistfully at the Steinway onstage before slowly speaking.

“Yes. To be honest, neither the Preliminary Round nor the first two Main Rounds lived up to what I had expected.”

The Committee Members nodded.

“She made it to the Final Round, but she did make quite a few mistakes.”

“Isn’t that part of a performer’s ability too? There isn’t a pianist who doesn’t get nervous. No one can bring out one hundred percent of what they have.”

“I agree. I believe what matters is being able to hold yourself together under pressure and give the best performance you can.”

Maria turned her head with an awkward expression.

‘That’s why boring performers keep placing.’

It was not something she could say to their faces, so she kept it to herself.

In truth, Gyeo-ul’s first and second Main Rounds had been rather close calls. She had seemed focused, yet never quite managed to fully immerse herself. Even so, Maria had given her the highest score.

There were two reasons.

The first was that, regardless of technique or interpretation, Gyeo-ul produced the most beautiful tone. The very texture of the sound that emerged the instant she pressed a key was overwhelmingly superior.

The other was the emotion that had leaked through between phrases of her performances.

Unlike the other contestants, she had tried to suppress it the entire time. Paradoxically, that was exactly why Maria could see it. There was something inside her so intense that it had to be kept under control. It was not the conventional sorrow associated with Chopin, but something raw and precarious.

Maria wanted to know how that suppressed explosive force would erupt when it met the immense wave of an orchestra.

“Well, it looks like they’re about to start.”

At Jan’s words, all the lights in the audience went dark at once.

***

Seo-ha sat at the far end of the second-floor balcony, looking down at the stage.

It could not exactly be called a great seat, but getting it had been anything but easy.

Tickets for the Final Round of the Chopin Competition could only be obtained through a lottery. Judging by previous years, the chances of winning were less than one percent. Needless to say, he had lost.

“Sorry. Contestants only get two tickets....”

Gyeo-ul apologized with a miserable expression.

“It’s fine. Of course they should go to your parents.”

Even so, he had not wanted to give up. Just as he resolved to scour every resale market until he found a ticket, one came to him through an unexpected route.

[From: Polish Academy of Sciences (Polska Akademia Nauk, PAN)]

-We have one spare ticket. Would you like to use it? It was allocated to our institution, but the person attending is no longer able to make it today.

‘What a blatant lie!’

The land of Copernicus and Marie Curie.

Poland took mathematics and science almost fanatically seriously. Seo-ha remembered that PAN had repeatedly invited him to give lectures.

Deciding that he would definitely accept their next invitation, Seo-ha sent his reply.

When he arrived at the hall, he found famous faces everywhere he looked.

World-renowned conductors and pianists, masters whom even people with little interest in classical music would probably have seen on the news at least once, were gathered within arm’s reach.

They were startled when they spotted Seo-ha. Then, one after another, they approached him and jokingly struck up conversations.

“I saw the video of you playing. Your piano skills are quite impressive.”

“Exactly. I’m curious. Does mathematics help with the piano too? If you happen to have any useful advice, I’d certainly love to hear it.”

“When I first saw the video, I thought you were a pianist.”

Seo-ha’s face reddened in embarrassment.

““Hahaha!””

Soft laughter spread around them.

They wanted to connect with Seo-ha through music.

Clap! Clap! Clap!

The door at the back of the stage opened, and a conductor in a black tailcoat walked out. It was Piotr Wisławski, principal conductor of the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra.

When he bowed toward the audience, applause echoed through the hall. After shaking hands with the concertmaster, he stepped onto the podium.

The first finalist to perform was twenty-five-year-old Ethan Lowell from the United States.

He was a pianist who had recently earned considerable acclaim after winning numerous Concours in the United States and Europe.

He sat at the piano and placed his hands over the keys. At last, the introduction to Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2 began to flow.

‘Wow! This is incredible.’

It was Seo-ha’s first time hearing a piano performed with orchestral accompaniment in a concert hall.

The soft yet sharp friction of bows against strings, the deep resonance of the winds. The vibrations of the heated air filled the vast hall.

Seo-ha closed his eyes and fully immersed himself in the emotion of the moment. And then the piano-

‘He’s good.’

A finalist indeed. It was a flawless performance. The audience seemed captivated by his precise touch and held their breaths as they listened.

With him as the beginning, the Final Round performances continued.

An expressive Russian pianist, rising stars from France and China. Performers of various nationalities each presented their own Chopin at the piano.

Since each concerto lasted well over thirty minutes, there was an intermission after every performance.

When the lights came back on, the audience flipped through their pamphlets and exchanged impressions with their companions. The masters seated near Seo-ha also launched into spirited discussions of their own.

“Lowell’s first movement is definitely in the Pollini vein. Very precise.”

“But the Russian had more dynamism in the third movement. I’d like to perform with him sometime.”

A bell rang three times, and the lights inside the hall dimmed once more.

-Han Gyeo-ul, Korea.

After the announcement sounded, the door at the back of the stage opened.

The moment Gyeo-ul appeared, murmurs began spreading throughout the audience.

“Oh....”

“My goodness, she isn’t wearing a dress.”

Gyeo-ul was dressed in a navy men’s suit. The unexpected sight surprised Seo-ha.

‘Is that maybe....’

She glanced up toward the second-floor balcony. When her eyes met Seo-ha’s, the corner of her mouth lifted slightly.

It looked remarkably similar to the outfit Seo-ha had worn for his recital.

“Hmm. So that’s what she chose to wear....”

“I understand why. There had been some talk.”

Curious, Seo-ha pricked up his ears.

From what he heard, rumors had been circulating about Gyeo-ul making it into the Final Round. People had been bad-mouthing her, claiming that she must have received extra points because she was so beautiful.

The outfit Gyeo-ul wore today was her answer. By stripping away every glamorous dress and ornament, she was declaring that she wanted them to listen to nothing but her music.

However, the reaction was not what she had expected.

“That look suits her remarkably well too.”

“She has such elegant proportions. It isn’t easy to create that kind of presence with nothing but your features and silhouette.”

No matter how much she stripped away, she could not hide her natural beauty. Moreover, unlike usual, Gyeo-ul’s face today shone with a clear, radiant vitality.

Gyeo-ul stood in front of the piano and bowed toward the audience.

After making eye contact with her, the conductor lightly raised his baton.

Rumble-

Chopin Piano Concerto No. 1 in E minor.

The majestic orchestral introduction once again filled Warsaw Philharmonic Hall. And then-

BOOM!

A heavy yet powerful note struck the entire hall.

Goosebumps rose along Seo-ha’s spine. Gyeo-ul’s Chopin had felt somewhat detached during the Preliminary Round and Main Rounds, but today was different.

The instant the first note fell, Maria’s eyes widened.

‘Finally!’

Gyeo-ul closed her eyes.

Competitors almost never did that during a competition.

‘She’s finally immersed.’

Maria smiled with satisfaction.

People often described Chopin’s music as music of sorrow and loss. But was that really all there was to it? Gyeo-ul had been unable to figure out what emotions she should bring to Chopin.

‘Now I know.’

From the agony of despair that had made her feel as though she were dying to happiness so overwhelming she felt she could take flight. The range of emotions she had experienced over the past few days had been nothing short of dramatic.

And when she woke that morning, the emotional arc of Piano Concerto No. 1, which had once seemed impossibly difficult to grasp, suddenly resonated with her more deeply than ever.

The first movement was the person she had been before she knew Seo-ha. The time when she had taken all the praise in the world for granted and arrogantly struck the keys.

People had praised her, calling her performances perfect. But it had only been perfection tailored to the standards others wanted from her.

Gyeo-ul had realized long ago that it was not real, but she had not known what she was supposed to do instead.

It had been a period of aimless wandering when she had done nothing but polish the outer shell, never knowing when she might fall. Through keystrokes that stormed across the piano as though they might shatter the keys, her emotions erupted like a desperate struggle.

‘Oh.’

The Committee Chairman swallowed without realizing it.

The richness and density of every note she produced were in a completely different league from those of the previous contestants.

The second movement began.

A smile slowly spread across Gyeo-ul’s lips.

‘Meeting you was the greatest stroke of luck in my life. The truth is, I wasn’t happy.’

The gentle melody of the second movement filled the hall.

As the orchestra receded and left the piano alone, Gyeo-ul’s hands slowly spoke to the audience through the keys.

Chopin must have felt the same way.

Loss hurt so much because happiness had come before it. Viewed another way, the depth of his most painful wounds was proof that he had known an even greater love.

Gyeo-ul’s hands glided across the keys.

Each note emerged as though she were carefully taking out a precious memory one by one.

‘What a wonderful expression.’

‘She looks like a girl in love.’

Only after meeting him had she realized it.

Talent, beauty, none of the blessings she had once believed herself to possess were really all that extraordinary.

‘Being unable to play because of my trauma was probably just me running away.’

Back then, she had only been searching for an excuse to quit music.

But Seo-ha had told her that because they were connected like this, things would be okay from then on. Looking back now, that must have been a frighteningly risky choice for Seo-ha as well.

He must have made it prepared to take responsibility for her life.

A gentle piano solo.

Its tender tone warmly embraced the entire hall.

‘Thank you.’

For the first time, she had learned what it meant to love someone.

The final third movement.

The orchestra powerfully joined in again.

Da-da-da-dan!

A buoyant rhythm sprang upward, followed by a melody bursting with life. Gyeo-ul’s playing raced passionately across the keys.

‘Chopin.’

Gyeo-ul thought.

‘You felt the same way, didn’t you?’

People always remembered him as the very symbol of sorrow.

An exile who had lost his homeland.

A frail genius.

The embodiment of tragedy who had lost love, his homeland, and eventually even his life.

But could Chopin truly be explained by that alone?

Could someone who had done nothing but stare toward death really have written music like this?

Music so dazzlingly alive.

BOOM!

Gyeo-ul’s piano surged upward in an explosion of sound.

Like birds soaring over fields at the arrival of spring.

Gyeo-ul was smiling happily. Her interpretation of the third movement was-

‘A hymn to life.’

Gyeo-ul was asking him.

Chopin, weren’t you, in the end, someone who loved life?

Da-da-da-dan!

Gyeo-ul’s right hand took flight.

The conductor’s eyebrows twitched before he immediately followed her, supporting her from behind. The strings became the wind, and the woodwinds became sunlight. The brass became cheers ringing out from a distant horizon.

The Committee Members leaned forward without realizing it.

‘This isn’t the performance she prepared!’

This was not an interpretation designed to safely secure a prize.

Nor was its flow calculated to suit the public’s tastes. Gyeo-ul was simply revealing everything inside her to the audience.

Maria clenched her fist.

‘Yes! Just like that! That’s a courageous decision.’

A Concours was a place where scores were given.

But art did not remain behind as a score. Even after many years had passed, the moments that stayed in people’s memories were always ones like this. Moments when a performer stood onstage with everything they had on the line.

Gyeo-ul’s fingertips moved faster and faster. Yet her breathing did not falter in the slightest. The orchestra was drawn into Gyeo-ul’s passion and began racing alongside her.

‘What in the world....’

The masters were stunned.

The overwhelming emotion shared by the orchestra and the audience alike. That sense of unity was carrying everyone somewhere none of them had ever been before.

The eyes of a principal string player grew wet.

The fields of Poland seemed to unfold before their eyes, and the audience could barely breathe.

‘That’s right, Chopin, isn’t it? Your life was this beautiful too, wasn’t it?’

The final Cadenza.

Gyeo-ul’s two hands raced across the keys like a storm.

‘I want to love more.’

‘I want to play more.’

Those feelings burst forth as blazing music.

BOOOOM!

The piece ended.

Gyeo-ul could not easily pull herself free from its lingering afterglow. Her head was tilted back, her eyes still closed.

The audience stared at the stage with dazed expressions.

A young artist sat before the piano, and her silhouette seemed to overlap with someone else’s.

A genius who had embraced his wounds and love, his wandering and joy, and transformed all of them into art.

At that moment, everyone thought the same thing.

If Chopin were reborn and played once more, perhaps this was what he would look like.

*****

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