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Audrey?

Yeah?

You...

You were raised like me.

You came out with your eyes open.

You were fully aware.

Your father...

Your father dedicated his life to his fiddle.

And that's what he left us. His instrument.

I can't tell you how many times I imagined dismantling it.

Your dad,

he had an incredible disappearing act, didn't he?

Just like my own pops.

Yeah, I know, Mom. I know.

We managed our moment, but it was tough.

He was on tour, he was rehearsing.

He was in the studio.

He just...

He just wasn't around.

You didn't handle that very well.

You know that some people said

that half of your personality was missing.

Audrey?

Are you listening?

Yeah.

When I die,

I want you to scatter

the violin's ashes with mine.

Audrey?

When I die,

I want you to scatter...

I was walking across my hotel room

and I tripped over a lamp cord and fell.

I was an old woman

and something like this can be the beginning of the end.

The humerus in my left shoulder was torn.

I was so afraid that I might never play again.

After my operation, I sat up in my hospital bed

feeling the wrenched bones and muscles.

The doctor handed me my violin.

My Guarnerius del Gesù.

I tried to place it under my chin,

but it fell from my fingers.

Gradually, I felt well again.

I reignited the Parlow String Quartet.

I found Cornelius Ysselstyn, Stanley Solomon,

and my newest recruit, Andy Benac.

I heard Benac play at a senior school recital.

I offered him a place straight away.

In his delight, Andy said that he nearly hit the roof.

I began to teach my hand again.

One exercise consisted of opening

and closing it very, very slowly,

sometimes taking me ten minutes to do it.

I began doing the exercises underwater

and my hands, relieved of their own weight,

could resume the remembered positions.

Every day, I tried something more difficult.

When I realized enduring the agony meant real progress,

I naturally didn't mind.

Some nine months later, in January 1961,

wearing a cobalt blue gown,

I gave a recital.

I played a program that displayed

the infinite beauties of the violin.

The staccatos in Mozart,

clear and definite, yet delicate.

Brahms' sonata, rich in tone without muddiness,

a fine-as-hair sound.

Respighi, rallentandos right and long,

sweeping, bowing, giving power and breath.

It was a concert played as if between my life

and my release to the heavens.

Three months afterward,

I fell on exiting a streetcar

and died in the hospital from the injuries.

Hi Inès.

Are you familiar with this article?

The manuscript of the Concerto by Johan Halvorsen, Opus 28?

What's the significance

of Kathleen's name being on the cover?

It's her concert copy?

It is her concert copy.

But the concerto was also dedicated

to Kathleen when she was 17.

When a concerto is dedicated to a musician,

it is implied that they take it on as a soloist.

What aspect of Kathleen's personality

would have inspired Halvorsen to write for her?

It was described that Kathleen was

especially technically proficient

and that she attacked difficulty with a certain gusto.

Audrey...

what happened with your presentation today?

I was brought to the collection

by a personal coincidence,

when I saw it listed in the archive holdings

and made the connection that Kathleen was

my grandfather's violin teacher.

I had been stuck for what to write my thesis on,

and this personal connection tethered me to something.

I worry that if I put her in an academic paper,

I'm just rearranging things or burying them deeper.

Is there a recording?

No.

It was performed in the Netherlands in 1909,

but the concerto was lost for over a century.

One of our archivists found it in a shoebox

while sorting through Kathleen's estate.

After Halvorsen retired as music director

of the National Theatre of Norway,

he had a stagehand burn many of his manuscripts.

Why did he burn it?

The concerto wasn't well received.

Critics said it was bombastic and technically difficult.

See here, the phrases of the violin

are constructed like opponents

that the violin cuts through like a sword.

It's ruthless.

Kathleen was single-minded and unsentimental.

She had this enormous success when she was young,

but she was totally neglected later in her life.

But still, she continued to play the violin

regardless of any external reinforcement.

People can be very put off

by a lack of sentimentality or frailty.

It's a contradiction in terms, isn't it?

To dedicate something to someone and then destroy it?

When you're looking at the objects

left behind by a person who has died,

you can obviously assign significance to what was kept.

Then there's also the importance of the objects that are missing,

such as Kathleen's famous violin,

the Guarnerius del Gesù,

that was unaccounted for in her estate.

But in terms of how the deceased

wanted those objects to be seen or used,

you'll find that in your attraction

to a particular object,

you're actually encountering your own will.

The Guarnerius del Gesù was purchased for Kathleen

by the Norwegian nobleman Einar Björnson.

Throughout the day books,

you can see "EB arriving", "EB leaving".

It's funny to see what may have been a love affair

described in only arrivals and departures.

On the day of their last meeting,

"EB sailing" is underlined with a hard dash.

She never married, you know.

She alleged that marriage

and an artistic career were incompatible.

I read that she'd marry another musician

if he were superior to her in ability,

because then she'd have to strive to be as good as him.

But if he were worse than her,

she'd have to take care of his feelings.

In fact, she said that most women

didn't have the dedication required

to be a great violinist.

Perhaps she meant that most women

are unwilling to give up on the possibilities of love.

Her life was occasioned by these Norwegian men.

Björnson with the del Gesù, Halvorsen with the Concerto.

But there was a point where their support

came with these weighted conditions,

and she had to free herself.

Still, she carried the experience of it

with her in her hands.

Audrey, you know I like talking to you,

but I'm your thesis supervisor.

It's irritating.

You expect me to keep making allowances for you.

You've presented no tangible work

toward your thesis, and you're coming toward

the end of your degree and your funding.

I can't support you continuing to accumulate.

I need you to bring your research

into some kind of action.

I know, I'm frustrated with myself, too.

Are you?

Kathleen once said,

music begins where love leaves off.

The Titanic was wrecked on her maiden voyage.

The whole world was shocked

and the city of New York was in a state of mourning.

A benefit concert at the Met was organized for the survivors.

I played Tchaikovsky's Sérénade mélancolique.

I felt a disparity between my own happiness

in the face of catastrophe.

What happened?

I left him.

I didn't know you two were close to breaking up.

I didn't even know there were problems.

I don't know what they were

or I can't feel that they matter now.

When I was explaining it to him,

I suddenly had this feeling like I was lying

and maybe everything was fine.

Maybe this pull I was feeling was something I made up.

It's such an absurd effort to change your life.

You follow an impulse

and something of that impulse is lost.

And your mother?

There's still time.

Is that what you're reading?

Mm!

I folded the corner of the page because it made me think of you.

Do you know the story?

No.

Basically, this young American woman leaves for Europe

with the sort of imprecise purpose

of gaining knowledge and experience.

And early into her trip, she's proposed to by a man

who has a social position, is intelligent,

and is expected to have a very important career.

Okay, here.

"He had conceived the design of drawing her into the system

"in which she rather individually lived and moved.

"A certain instinct, not imperious but persuasive,

"told her to resist, murmured to her that virtually,

"she had a system and an orbit of her own.

"It told her other things besides,

"things which both contradicted and confirmed each other.

"That a girl might do much worse

"than trust herself to such a man,

"and that it would be very interesting

"to see something of his system from his own point of view.

"On the other hand, there was evidently a great deal of it

"which she should regard only as a complication of every hour,

"and that even in the whole

"there was something stiff and stupid

which would make it a burden."

Isn't that amazing?

Yeah, it is.

It's like she's interested in understanding the boundary

between herself and the world and were she to include him,

it would be a completely different organization,

probably a cumbersome one.

I admire her decisiveness.

Or the clarity she seems to get out of it.

I have this feeling like

a decision doesn't really matter,

that it doesn't impact or change anything.

I thought making a decision would feel like more.

Ah, fuck!

The spring of 1912

was a time of special success for me.

I had recently met Thomas Edison,

who had just invented the cylinder phonograph.

Edison and I met several times,

and he asked if I would be willing

to have my playing recorded.

- "Eager and willing." - I responded.

How about April 30th?, he asked.

To have my playing recorded

so that it could be heard again and again

made me feel like I'd live forever.

Many people had bought the cylinder playing machines

and Edison was concerned

with keeping them supplied with new recordings.

I made the most of my sessions with them

and their first advertisements even carried my picture.

There are 6.5 million sound recordings

at the British Library.

My job as a sound archivist is to try and find compelling ways

to tell the stories of these recordings

and also to create sensorial experiences with them,

tapping into the effects

that sounds can have over memory.

What is particular to the preserving

of sounds as opposed to objects?

People think of sound as something that's ephemeral,

as if once it goes out into the universe,

it's no longer connected to anything or anyone.

You can see the difficulty of this

when it comes to archiving sound.

We want sound to be kept and remembered,

but we also want it to be catalogued with metadata,

which describes the context of its creation.

Just because it isn't visual

doesn't mean that the circumstances

of its creation can't be made apparent.

How do you go about presenting

the contexts or narratives of sounds?

You want to bring the sound to the surface,

but you also want to uncover

the history of how it was recorded.

Storytelling with sound archives

is about defining what is happening

that isn't necessarily audible.

For instance, wax cylinders are one of the earliest formats

that sound was recorded on commercially,

When they were made available, Europeans could listen

to Indigenous American music for the first time.

They said, "How interesting that their songs

"are always around three to four minutes long."

But what they didn't realize was

that the physical length of the cylinder

actually determined the duration of the recording.

What is the intended effect on the listener?

Sorry to be so vague, but there are all kinds.

It depends on the type of recording

you're asking about.

I'm interested in recordings which have a narrative element

and also ones that bring people into a space

in which they can be transformed.

As an archivist, I want to create

a pure listening experience

where the storytelling isn't just about the song or the text.

Even though the sounds are contained

within the wax cylinders,

I like to think of them as boundary-less

because they can take us into different times and spaces.

I've prepped a cylinder for you

which has the recording you requested on it.

We can listen to it in the library.

It seems to be quite empty in there today

Wax cylinders are literally cylinders coated with wax.

The surface is actually inscribed

through the pressure of sound.

It started off as a mechanical way

of recording sound

that didn't require electricity.

It was acoustic.

Performers would sing, speak or play

down the horn of the phonograph.

Recording, in essence, is about reproducing

or suggesting living presence.

There was a farmer who'd play

a recording of clucking to his hens

and they would lay more eggs because they were so excited

to hear the sound of their own cackling.

What I love about wax cylinders is

that they can have a lot of surface noise,

and that noise is like a sort of metaphor

of the distance between you and when the recording was made.

It's such a fragile medium, prone to dust and mould.

And these Blue Amberols can wear out or shrink easily.

But through all of that,

you can still hear the melody and the rhythm

and feel the presence of the performer.

It wasn't stored very well,

but I think these kinds of imperfections

make it all the more unique.

You can hear the texture of time past

and the wounds inflicted on the cylinder itself.

Mother and I were fortunate

to have Meldreth during the war years.

Concert tours were becoming increasingly difficult.

Meldreth seasons were long and quiet.

There was no radio.

People were slow to believe the newspapers.

Mother extended the vegetable gardens

and added chickens.

This not only helped with living expenses,

but was a highly patriotic undertaking.

Nothing here.

You don't need that, do you?

You can tuck it away, no one's going to steal it.

Hi.

You must be Joan.

Nice to meet you.

I am indeed. Oh! Ahem.

I am indeed Joan

from the Meldreth Historical Society.

Thank you for agreeing to do this.

Oh, it's not a problem. But let's get inside, shall we?

It's quite cold out.

Watch yourselves as you step in.

I'm not sure about the state of these floors.

What's next door? Is it part of the same property?

It's a care home

that used to be attached to this one.

It specializes in supporting elderly people with dementia.

Really?

The reason why the homestead was so useful

at some point is because the staff lived here.

But suddenly there was a decline in the number of patients

and in the population of Meldreth in general.

So this building became redundant.

So it's completely out of use?

Some say it would be convenient

if the building could be levelled out,

but it's not possible because it has heritage status.

So it just stands here rotting really.

So let's start the tour.

So according to the architecture of most homes

of this kind in Cambridgeshire,

this is where the living room would have been.

But back then, living rooms were called parlours.

Before funeral homes existed,

bodies were exhibited in parlours.

Then, when people were able to gather

and celebrate the life of the deceased

in a funeral home,

parlours became rooms for the living.

Hence the term living room.

Ah.

So just have a wander around, get the feel for it.

Hmm.

Would they have used the room for any other purpose,

or was it strictly when people died?

Oh, no, they would have used it...

I was always buying books.

I typically turned to the best current biographies,

memoirs and travel.

I had only a slight interest in novels.

The walls had been painted white

to show off my mother's latest photography efforts.

On the mantle, she arranged

some of the curios I'd bought from Norway.

The rugs on the floor were the result of shrewd buying,

and everywhere in the house was evidence of Mother's good taste.

If you're ready, we'll continue to the kitchen.

Sure.

I'll lead the way.

These look like the original cabinets.

Yeah, they would probably have been there in Kathleen's time.

But as you can see, there have been

a few modifications over the years.

And over by these windows

they likely had a washing-up station

that's since been removed.

Oh!

Incontinence pads, size L.

Nine orders.

I was described as unusual. Hmm.

A Rossetti beauty with my elongated neck,

broad shoulders

and masculine features.

This looks very sophisticated. What was that used for?

Yes, this is how the servants heard

who needed them upstairs.

They'd be down here and that bell would ring,

and a number would come up

and they'd know which room they had to get into upstairs.

I didn't think about how I appeared,

but every so often,

when I felt myself being seen,

it caused me to feel unsettled.

If you'd like to follow me to the staircase through here.

How many bedrooms are in this house?

About four, I think, at last count.

I don't imagine it changes very much.

No, I don't suppose so.

Entering the solarium,

I followed that procession of characters.

Wife of, Bath,

Reeves,

Chaucer, Franklin,

Lady Abbess, Friar,

Knight and Squire.

I stared for a moment and looked out at the garden.

A long stretch of clean lawn extended

from the back of the house,

at the end of which were fruit and chestnut trees

under which you could play croquet

and listen to the birds.

My studio was entirely separate from the main house

so that I would not be disturbed.

Woe betide anyone or thing that attempted to approach me.

It is at the beginning that an artist

needs a good instrument.

Einar Björnson spoke to me.

The finest violin one could acquire.

The Guarnerius del Gesù.

I stared in surprise at the mention

of this rare violin

that was beyond the reach of a poor girl

scarcely passed the student stage.

I hadn't overcome my shock before he put into motion

the violin being acquired for me.

At first I was embarrassed by the extravagance

and intimidated by the instrument.

It had an enchanted quality and a large presence.

It seemed to mark something I couldn't return from.

I tried to give it back,

but then I felt more alarmed by the trickery of my mind

that would have me see this object as a curse.

It was soon after revealed that Einar spent

his father's Nobel Prize money

and his wife's dowry on the violin.

No longer having any money,

he returned to his family, and we no longer saw him.

It was in my studio in Meldreth during the war,

without an audience,

that I approached the del Geùu each day and played.

I made it my purpose

not to be disturbed by its power,

but to approach it humbly and fearlessly.

In doing so, it became my partner and a part of myself.

And the violin,

the precious Guarnerius del Gesù.

Where is it now?

The house did not have electricity

and all illumination was accomplished with candles,

because my mother was afraid of oil lamps.

You can imagine how candelabras added

to the already great charm of the house.

At night, each of us carried our own up to bed.

Books that were...

What the fuck are you doing in here?

What do you mean?

You completely disappeared!

I was following Joan,

I turned around and you were gone.

- It was rude. - I'm sorry.

Come on.

I told her we'd meet at the pub

to start the walking tour of the town.

So you managed to find her!

Well done. - Sure did.

So, the tour of Meldreth really begins here.

This is a pub called the British Queen

that was built in the 1840s.

So would Kathleen have possibly eaten here?

No, because it would have been a beer house.

Really? Would she have had a beer here?

No.

Beer houses were for the men, the workers.

Right.

Audrey!

I'll show you a few sights of the village.

Thank you so much for your time.

No, It's a pleasure. It really is.

It's not often I get a chance

to show people who've come from a long way,

which you have, to our village.

Is this allowed?

You two really don't get out of the city much, do you?

No, I suppose we don't.

Not many sheep where you come from!

Alright.

Next stop coming up.

This is the River Mel,

which has flowed through here for many years.

It's doing quite well at the moment,

but sometimes it stops.

They have a pump to get it going again,

if you know what I mean.

Further up, the river meets the mill

where a family called the Mortlocks lived.

Who were they?

They were a wealthy family who basically owned Meldreth.

Kathleen would probably have known them

because they were at the centre...

When I die...

Audrey...

Audrey?

Do you mind recording the rest of the walking tour?

Sure.

Hi.

It's funny, the bridge across the train tracks

connecting the towns.

It's funny how each town is self-contained.

You can really imagine it in wartime,

people living these quiet, circumscribed lives.

And you didn't even have to finish the tour.

How was the rest of the walk?

It was fine.

- I'll have the same, please. - Okay.

The food sounds really good.

Fish and chips, steak and ale pie,

bangers and mash.

I'll have the steak and ale pie.

Should I have the mac and cheese

or the fish and chips?

Probably the fish and chips.

I'll have the fish and chips, please.

How did you find the house?

I found it a bit sad to see

such a beautiful place in disrepair.

Did you notice the industrial carpeting

over the original hardwood floors?

There was moss growing on the ceiling.

It feels like a way of life is in the past.

Mother and daughter living together,

doing the same thing every day.

Taking comfort in the materials of their immediate surroundings.

Not in a way that's about luxury,

but about intimacy and the knowledge of a place.

I could really imagine her there,

playing the violin every day.

Even more so because she wouldn't have known

when she'd have an audience again.

How's your mother?

She's fine.

I mean, she's not fine, but it's fine.

Are you mad at me?

I'm not mad at you.

So you just expect me to be

as interested in all of this as you are?

I've come along with you, and I'm happy to.

But it's an effort.

Then you just abandon me

in the middle of this walking tour

like it's something I would have elected to do on my own.

You're completely evasive

when it comes to your personal life.

You just broke up

with your boyfriend of five years.

You're completely lost with your thesis.

Your mother is dying and you won't address any of it.

You can stay with me if you need to run away,

and I'm happy to support you in any way I can,

but you cannot expect me to sustain

the same obsessive blindness as you.

I can't be near her.

She makes these outrageous demands,

and if I refuse her, it becomes even more enormous.

She's terrified of her anger.

But she's also covetous of it.

She doesn't want it taken away from her.

She wants complete submission.

What sorts of demands does she make?

So many.

But mainly she wants me to validate her feelings.

Or more than that, she wants me to feel the same as her.

She wants me to hate who she hates.

Like my father, I was never allowed

to appreciate how talented he was.

When I was a kid, she'd talk about

the career she'd have had if I hadn't been born.

How by becoming a mother,

she sacrificed being a violinist.

But I remember, even when I was young

feeling there was something false about this.

I think the violin made her really unhappy,

constantly having to put herself forward

and being confronted with her limitations.

When I was born, she made me the reason she quit,

making it a sacrifice, something noble.

Her pain makes her so helpless.

She seems to think

that only my devotion can alleviate it.

And now she's sick, it's like she wants to take me with her.

And I just need to get away.

Audrey, it's okay.

She can't take you with her.

I think part of me thinks it's fair

to ask for that kind of devotion.

Subjugation is not love, Audrey.

But I understand. And I sympathize with her.

Well, it certainly makes it more difficult

if even your curiosity is an affront to her.

It seems to me that your every thought

is weighed against,

"Is this worth choosing over my mother?"

And the answer will probably always be no.

And so everything will always feel meaningless.

That's why it's so important

that people allow each other the freedom

to follow their desires without guilt.

But I don't know how to express it.

I feel...

Sometimes I feel so close to something,

but when I try to describe it, I lose it again.

I'm sorry.

Kathleen was a bit of a myth in my family.

Because of the hold she had over my grandfather,

even after she died.

Just by the standard she set,

her dedication without need for congratulation.

When I first visited the archive,

I had this feeling of a presence that was already there.

I could just feel so viscerally

that these objects were from the past,

but also that they were containers

through which the past could be entered.

And then I started to read about her life,

how she was the first student to study

with Leopold Auer

at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory.

How Björnson gifted her this rare violin.

How Halvorsen wrote this concerto

to demonstrate her particular ability.

And then all the time after that,

that she continued to play.

And I started to feel

this incredible desire to hear her.

Sound persists so differently than objects do.

It is never tangible,

but it can be repeated in a way that's transportive

and connected to every other time

it's been sounded.

It's like the past itself is present.

Didn't Kathleen keep her copy of Opus 28?

You said that's the only existing instruction

for the music.

You could stage the concerto.

It would be the first time it was heard in 100 years.

You could find a way to hear her.

The worst moment for a performer

are the first five minutes before going onstage.

They are terrible.

But once I start playing, the nervousness goes.

As Auer often said,

the true inspiration of Bach or Beethoven

harks back to nature.

Nature of the divine.

Inspiration lies dormant until we make it glow.

I was coming to the end of a heavy European tour

and Auer was in an argument with my agent

to get me back to London.

He wanted me to prepare a program to be presented

at the Queen's Hall Orchestra.

This would mark my departure from being a child prodigy

into being treated as a serious artist.

Oslo was the last stop before returning home.

I was 17 and engaged to play at Brodrene Halls,

which was adjacent to the National Theater.

It was told to me afterwards

that the audience from the theatre

crowded into the hall during their intermission

to hear me play.

Within days, I was asked to play a program of Tchaikovsky

at the National Theatre

and asked to give a private audience

to the King and Queen.

There was a feeling of the future spilling over.

It was at that fateful concert

that Johan Halvorsen was in attendance.

He began his work on Opus 28 almost immediately.

Einar Björnson was also present.

And suddenly, my mother and I became

regular guests at his home.

He took us out for dinner and the theatre

most nights of the following week.

Johan Halvorsen was the head

of the Norwegian Symphony Orchestra,

and conducted me in my eventual performance

at the National Theatre.

He toiled over the concerto and wrote the cadenzas

with the hope of matching my particular ability.

He began to send me pages to learn and respond to,

always emphasizing

that if I wanted anything altered,

I should write to him.

Hello.

Yes, this is she.

It isn't possible for me to...

It isn't possible for me

to return to the hospice right away.

You think it could really be so soon?

Thank you for calling.

The music was severe but mournful,

and technically very challenging.

The joy of preparing the concerto

was hard to describe.

But technical difficulty would never discourage me.

It only goaded me on.

The dramatic movements required unbroken attention.

And I would come away entirely exhausted.

We'll take it from the beginning of the 10th bar,

where you begin the cadenza and start to climb.

Remember to lean deeply

into the inside of the phrasings.

The solo was extremely quick.

Riddled with sensitive legatos.

Signed with little crescendos between notes.

It was difficult to dig into every passage

and still come away with the feeling of movement.

Okay. We need to feel,

through this section, a little bit more...

You're rushing through it too much.

You must move with all of the changes.

At the end of the cadenza, we land.

It's an unexpected surprise.

If you're rushing with all this intensity,

then we're too aware of time passing.

Then we get to the end

and there's no surprise, no levity.

It becomes boring.

I pushed myself to technical perfection

because that is where art could begin.

For only by feeling each note fully can one move

into each emotional moment in a composition.

Tusen takk, thank you for letting me watch rehearsal.

It was really wonderful.

Audrey Benac. I'm Misha.

- Pleased to meet you. - You look tired.

No, I'm fine.

You're not fine. Have you eaten?

Yes, I have.

I don't believe you.

Come. You're going to have lunch with Elisa and I.

You don't have to do that.

This yours?

Thank you.

Let's go.

But there are a lot of women

who have success in playing the violin

and who are celebrated for it.

Sure, but there's a difference

between how Canadians talk about Kathleen Parlow

and Glenn Gould, for example.

Well, Glenn Gould was a business project.

Someone told him to play Bach in another way.

Someone sold his style.

In my opinion, in comparison to Kathleen Parlow,

Glenn Gould had someone that cared.

He had a business partner who said,

"Okay, let's go in that hall and they will pay you $500."

Exactly. Kathleen had that

when she was young and prodigious,

but she came out of WWI in her late 20s

and her supports were gone.

Surely that tells us

something about what there was a business for.

Yes, but it's also a question of luck.

I disagree. Bias makes luck impossible.

That was really delicious. Thank you.

Audrey, please.

I invited you here not because you're a woman,

not because you're a guest, not because I like you,

not even because I feel sorry for you.

I invited you because I want to, and one thank you is enough.

Sure, I'm just really grateful.

T'es trop polie.

Pardon?

You're too polite.

How long have you been teaching at the conservatory?

Ten years.

Do you like it?

I mean, what else am I to do?

Music is a language which I speak.

And teaching is a way of understanding that language

and making it understood.

It's simple.

Does he make you practise a lot?

He doesn't make me do anything.

Right.

I like to practise.

It's important for me to stay focused, to evolve.

I only meant that it's a lot to give your life to.

Music isn't my life. It is a way of life.

You can have any feeling toward it,

but you're committed to it

just as you're committed to living.

You can't wake up and say to yourself, "Live fully today."

But you can wake up and say, "Play the violin."

Must be incredible to produce a violinist like Elisa.

I don't produce violinists,

and neither does the conservatory.

All they do, and I suppose all that I do

is make space for students to practise making sounds.

Sounds that will, hopefully, impress people

when they're played in the theatre.

And Elisa,

she's a unique person.

And at first I didn't take her talent too seriously

because, you know, everyone is unique.

Everyone has individuality.

Her temperament reminds me...

I don't know if you heard me say this earlier.

Maybe you did.

But this young person is a wolf.

She knows exactly what she wants.

You see that not only in her life,

but in each phrase she plays.

That must be quite a thing to feel.

I have to go home now. It's time to practise.

- It was good to meet you. - Good to meet you.

Bye, Elisa.

Have you had a chance to read the manuscript

of the concerto that I emailed you?

The Halvorsen?

Now he was an excellent conductor,

but he wasn't a great composer.

I don't think that's true exactly.

And the piece is unique

because it's written for the violin.

And Halvorsen was a violinist and composed on the violin.

He really explored the possibilities

of the instrument.

He was a romantic and a neurotic.

He recycled many of the same themes

and didn't seem to ever be able

to articulate what he was getting at.

Is it your ambition to get this concerto performed?

Yes, it is.

And it's the Toronto Symphony

that you want to have perform it?

Yes.

It's never been performed in Canada before.

I've written to them,

but they haven't gotten back to me yet.

It might take you four years to get a "no",

but sure, you can keep trying.

What if I told you it might sound

much better somewhere else?

En flaske akevitt og to glass.

You'll need to get the concerto transcribed to be performed,

and to be cross-referenced with any source material

to determine the most final version.

It's not just the violin solo,

it's the full orchestral score and parts.

And there's correspondence

between Kathleen and Halvorsen

concerning how it should be interpreted.

You'll need to engage a music publisher

that would organize and finance the transcription.

It's a matter of engaging an orchestra

that would program the concerto

as part their season,

and cover all of the costs

of the space, rehearsals, musicians.

Therefore, Audrey, what becomes your job

is to convince people of the historic

and the artistic value of the work.

And of course, it's possible

that the composer was right to burn it.

He was self-taught and very afraid

of being judged as a composer,

and therefore sensitive to criticism.

And criticisms were that the themes were half-baked,

that it was dense and overly complicated,

that as a composer it was tangential,

and his ideas were incomplete.

It doesn't have to be a masterpiece in order justify

the need for it to be performed.

There's value in a minor work, too.

It's possible that it's intentionally fragmentary.

A lack of precision can be a conscious strategy

to prevent easy resolution or domination.

Something that isn't whole or irrefutable

can emote a sense of effort and grasping.

It's an oversimplification,

what you said about him being a romantic.

Sure, he didn't make intellectual music,

but he was in conversation

with folkloric music, not just reinforcing it.

You need to look harder at what the experiments are.

But we can only infer so much from reading it.

We won't know what it is until it's been performed.

We need to hear it!

Well.

What you'll need most essentially is

a soloist that is daring.

The concerto is very virtuosic,

thick with 16th notes, arpeggios and allegro crescendos.

You'll need a violinist with a certain mania

that takes a certain glee in attacking challenges.

Someone perverse.

- I thought you hadn't read it. - I glimpsed at it.

Why are you always carrying that violin around?

You said you aren't a musician.

What is it for?

It was my grandfather's.

He gave it to my father

when he retired, and my mother was very hurt by that.

She felt he wasn't supportive of her career,

and she discouraged me from pursuing one.

Let me take a look at the violin.

I won't harm it, I promise.

It appears you have something of value here.

Audrey.

I believe that what you have here is

a Viotti Guarnerius del Gesù.

This instrument is almost 300 years old.

But how?

Its maker, Guarneri, was a sort of Picasso.

His violins were made

with reckless energy, a certain violence.

The wood is crude. There are little slashes here.

Even the design on the scroll

is asymmetrical, like a cubist painting.

These instruments proudly wear their history

in the blemishes he let sit on their surfaces.

Guarneri died when he was in his forties.

He was a little bit of a drunk, but he lived fully.

A compelling life compared to Stradivari,

who lived very conservatively

and died on a workbench in his nineties.

He made these astonishingly elegant,

perfectly constructed instruments,

but still they never matched

the way Guarneri could make

two vibrating plates emit a sound.

No, but how did I come to have it?

When a musician passes away, sometimes they leave

their instrument to a prized pupil.

It's possible that your grandfather

inherited this instrument

from Kathleen Parlow.

I had no idea.

Are you sure about that?

I felt compelled to carry it.

I can't quite explain it to myself.

Thank you for lunch and for the drink.

I have to go.

You were called by many critics

the greatest woman violinist of the day.

Did this bother you?

I didn't like that.

I didn't go out to play as a woman.

I went out to play the violin, period.

Critics would say that your mastery

and fire of the instrument was almost masculine.

That also I didn't like.

Miss Parlow, looking back over a career

that's 50 or 60 years,

or actually more than 60 years,

you're in your seventh decade now,

have you any regrets?

You must have given up many things

to have spent the hours just in practise and travelling.

I didn't seem to mind.

It seemed to be the thing I had to do.

It never occurred to me, no matter how hard things were,

money and everything else,

we weren't good business people, although I earned a lot.

But managers always managed to get most of it away.

And people said, why don't you learn what they do?

But they always went

in a different direction, you see.

You learn what they did once to teach you,

and that could never happen to you again.

But there were other ways. They had "a way a day."

It's a pity, there should be a Canada Council grant

for honoured artists who are now in retirement.

That'd be very nice.

- Let's plug for that idea. - All right.

Better than medals, don't you think?

Oh yes, very much better. Yes.

One of the things you must have given up

is marriage, domesticity.

Do you regret that?

I don't think so.

Not when I see some of my friends.

I think I've been very lucky.

Was there no one you had a special interest in?

Yes, but I thought I'd have to give up the violin.

So you see, that's it. Violin.

And today, do you still practise as much?

I don't practise as much, but I do practise every day.

It's amazing that with the violin

the digital facility is still with you.

Well, when I haven't got that, I shall stop.

And your instrument, Miss Parlow, what is it?

That's a Viotti Guarnerius del Gesù.

It's a very, very valuable and famous instrument.

Something to the order of 60 to $70 thousand?

It should be, yes, that's it.

- How old is it? - 1735.

Do you have another, a second string?

Yes, I have a Ruggieri, which is good, too.

Why do violinists carry two with them?

Well, you see, something might go wrong.

They're very sensitive to the weather.

This has been in the hospital for two days, too, with change.

They don't like change of weather.

Italy or California are the places they thrive in.

Why do you think we haven't got great violinists today?

I really couldn't tell you.

Everybody has a new idea what's wrong with it.

Rock'n'roll one of them,

television and records another. I don't know.

These giants of yesteryear, how do you rank them

with the great names that we know as violinists today?

That is a rather difficult question,

because nothing in my mind can be like Ysaye and Kreisler

and Auer in his heyday.

He didn't play well in the end, he was too nervous.

But I heard him in his own home

and there was still the old fire.

Kathleen?

Mother?

Leave!

No...

No...

No...

No...

No...

Do you ever resist practising?

Doesn't an action lose meaning if it becomes a habit?

Do you think you missed anything

by giving your life to the violin?

There's nothing that I couldn't experience

through the violin.

It allowed me to feel the world, the boundaries of myself fully.

My mother died.

I'm sorry.

One time, a family friend told me

that I have the same arms as my mother.

I had the strangest understanding

that what he really meant was,

though I didn't then, there was something

about my arms that told him

that I'd have the same arms as my mother one day.

Some months ago I was walking

and I suddenly felt in my posture

and the way I was holding my arms

that they were the same as my mother's.

A shock of fear ran through me.

I don't know how to describe it other than

inevitability being the feeling

of being pulled back and swallowed.

We both show a lot of emotion in our arms.

They're so available,

but they're the first thing that shows our shyness,

or a feeling of rejection.

I hated seeing that I'm as easily hurt

and readable as she is.

The violin requires relaxation of the arms and wrists.

Maybe it's her arms that gave her away.

Do we belong to other people?

What responsibility do we have to the people that love us?

There was a time when love gave me my life.

Einar was moved by me.

He wanted me to fully realize myself

and impress others.

Our love was expressed by our dedication to my playing.

But there's a moment

when the circumstances of life make things impossible.

And if you don't accept them,

the goodwill turns with it and the love gets ruined.

But if you accept the reality,

the love is preserved

and you can carry it throughout your life.

But how do you know what's your will

and what's somebody else's?

You might find that while you take one course,

the other continues existing somewhere,

just as possible futures exist that will never come to pass.

I think the only question becomes

how can you not feel lost?

Sometimes I see a path ahead of me,

but then I lose the feeling

and I don't know how to call myself back to it.

Would you learn the violin solo for Opus 28 again?

Not only while she stood

on the concert platform,

but in her daily life,

the claim of music was supreme.

The photographs taken for her debut

show a slender girl,

nearly six feet tall and of rather unusual beauty.

The heavy, braided hair brushed simply from her forehead

and lifted off her shoulders.

The velvet dress shirred and gathered

from a high lace yoke,

gave her the appearance

of a figure in a Renaissance painting.

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