Exercises

My Way to Success

By Nadja

From the day I signed up for the Naumburg Competition, everything changed. I had made a decision to start again, to save my life, and that meant a 360-degree turnaround.

I kept on practicing. An enormous amount of work had to be done in two months. I went from not practicing at all to thirteen hours a day.

I spent two weeks just playing scales. If I thought I sounded bad before, now I sounded worse than awful.

At the time I lived on 72nd Street, close to West End Avenue. I had an apartment with a window the size of a shoebox. I didn't do my laundry. I left my apartment only to walk to Juilliard─and not on Broadway like everyone else. I walked up Amsterdam Avenue because I didn't want to see anybody, didn't want to run into anybody, didn't want anyone to ask what I was doing.

I stopped going to classes and became a hermit. I even talked Miss DeLay into giving my lesson at night.

My eating habits were awful. I lived on fried sausages, a pint of peanut butter/chocolate ice cream, and a gallon of Coca-Cola every day. That's all I ate for eight weeks.

I was nuts. I was completely obsessed with getting back into shape, with doing well in this competition. If I could, people would know I was still on earth. Not to count me out; to stop asking, "Whatever happened to Nadja?”"

The last week before the Naumburg auditions, I couldn't touch the violin. I had worked and worked and worked and worked and then I just couldn't work anymore.

I certainly could have used it. I wasn't as prepared as I should have been. But I simply had to say, "Nadja, you've dedicated yourself to this thing. Ready or not, do your best."

Fifty violinists from around the world auditioned for the competition on May 25, 26, and 27, 1981. Those that made it past the preliminaries would go on to the semifinals. Those that passed that stage would go to the finals. In years past, one violinist was chosen as winner and two received second and third place.

On May 26, the day of my audition, I went to the Merkin Concert Hall at 67th Street and Broadway. I waited, played for twenty minutes, and went home. I couldn't tell whether the preliminary judges were impressed or not. I'd find out the next evening.

Maybe subconsciously I was trying to keep busy; that night, when I fried the sausages, I accidentally set my apartment on fire. I grabbed my cat and my violin, and ran out the door. The fire was put out, but everything in my place was wrecked.

Fortunately, the phone was okay and on the evening of May 27, I had the news from Lucy Rowan Mann of Naumburg. Thirteen of us had made it.

Talk about mixed emotions. I was thrilled to be among the thirteen; a group that included established violinists, some of whom had already made records. But it also meant I had to play the next day in the semifinals of the competition.

Everyone entering the competition had been given two lists of concertos. One was a list of standard repertory pieces. The other list was twentieth-century repertory. For our big competition piece, we were to choose from each list and play a movement from one in the semifinals, and a movement from the other in the finals─if we made it that far.

From the standard repertory list, I chose the Tchaikovsky Concerto. I had been playing the Tchaik for three years, so it was a good piece for me.

From the twentieth-century list, I chose the Prokofiev G minor Concerto. I had never played it onstage before.

My goal had been just passing the auditions, but now my thought pattern began to change. If I wanted a sliver of a chance of advancing again, my brain said, "Play your strong piece first."

Logically, I should play the Tchaikovsky in the semifinals just to make it to the next stage. Who cared if that left me with a piece I probably wouldn't play as well in the finals of the competition? It'd be a miracle to get that far.

There wouldn't be more than seven violinists chosen for the final round, and if I were in the top seven of an international group, that was plenty good enough.

The semifinals were held on May 28 in Merkin Concert Hall. You were to play for thirty minutes: your big piece first, then the judges would ask to hear another.

There was a panel of eight judges. They had a piece of paper with my choices of the Tchaikovsky and the Prokofiev in front of them. "Which would you like to play?" they asked.

I said meekly, "Prokofiev."

My brain and all the logic in the world had said, "Play your strong piece." My heart said, "Go for it all. Play your weak piece now, save Tchaikovsky for the finals."

Maybe I don't listen to logic so easily after all.

My good friend, the pianist Sandra Rivers, had been chosen as accompanist for the competition. She knew I was nervous. There had been a very short time to prepare; I was sure there'd be memory slips, that I'd blank out in the middle and the judges would throw me out. My hands were like ice.

The first eight measures of the Prokofiev don't have accompaniment. The violin starts the piece alone. So I started playing.

I got through the first movement and Sandra said later my face was as white as snow. She said I was so tense, I was beyond shaking. Just a solid brick.

It was the best I'd ever played it. No memory slips at all. Technically, musically, it was there.

I finished it thinking, "Have I sold my soul for this? Is the devil going to visit me at midnight? How come it went so well?"

I didn't know why, but often I do my best under the worst of circumstances. I don't know if it's guts or a determination not to disappoint people. Who knows what it is, but it came through for me, and I thank God for that.

As the first movement ended, the judges said, "Thank you." Then they asked for the Carmen Fantasy.

I turned and asked Sandy for an A, to retune, and later she said the blood was just rushing back into my face.

I whispered, "Sandy, I made it. I did it."

"Yeah," she whispered back, kiddingly, "too bad you didn't screw up. Maybe next time."

At that point I didn't care if I did make the finals because I had played the Prokofiev so well. I was so proud of myself for coming through.

I needed a shot in the arm; that afternoon I got evicted. While I was at Merkin, my moped had blown up. For my landlord, that was the last straw.

What good news. I was completely broke and didn't have the next month's rent anyway. The landlord wanted me out that day. I said, "Please, can I have two days. I might get into the finals, can I please go through this first?"

I talked him into it, and got back to my place in time for the phone call. "Congratulations, Nadja,”" they said. "You have made the finals."

I had achieved the ridiculously unlikely, and I had saved my best piece. Yet part of me was sorry. I wanted it to be over already. In the three days from the preliminaries to the semifinals, I lost eight pounds. I was so tired of the pressure.

There was a fellow who advanced to the finals with me, an old, good friend since Pre-College. Competition against friends is inevitable in music, but I never saw competition push a friendship out the window so quickly. By the day of the finals, I hated him and he hated me. Pressure was that intense.

The finals were held on May 29 at Carnegie Hall and open to the public. I was the fourth violinist of the morning, then there was a lunch break, and three more violinists in the afternoon.

I played my Tchaikovsky, Saint-Sa‘ns's Havanaise, and Ravel's Tzigane for the judges: managers, famous violinists, teachers, and critics. I went on stage at five past eleven and finished at noon. Those fifty-five minutes seemed like three days.

I was so relieved when I finished playing; I was finished! It's impossible to say how happy I was to see the dressing room. I went out for lunch with my friends. It was like coming back from the grave. We laughed and joked and watched TV.

As I returned to Carnegie Hall to hear the other violinists, I realized I'd made a big mistake: they might ask for recalls. A recall is when they can't decide between two people and they want you to play again. It's been done; it's done all the time in competitions. No way was I in shape to go onstage and play again.

In the late afternoon, the competition was over. Everybody had finished playing. Quite luckily─no recalls.

The judges deliberated for an hour. The tension in the air was unbelievable. All the violinists were sitting with their little circle of friends. I had my few friends around me, but no one was saying much now.

Finally, the Naumburg Foundation president Robert Mann came on stage.

"It's always so difficult to choose ..." he began.

"Every year we hold this competition," Robert Mann said. "And in the past, we've awarded three prizes. This year we've elected to only have one prize, the first prize."

My heart sank. Nothing for me. Not even Miss Congeniality.

"We have found," Mann went on, "that second place usually brings great dismay to the artist because they feel like a loser. We don't want anyone here to feel like a loser. Every finalist will receive five hundred dollars except the winner, who will receive three thousand dollars."

And then he repeated how difficult it was to choose, how well everyone had played ...dah, dah, dah.

I was looking down at the floor.  

"The winner is ..."

And he said my name.

A friend next to me said, "Nadja, I think you won!"

I went numb. My friends pulled me up and pointed me toward the stage. It was a long walk because I had slipped into a seat in the back. Sitting up in front was my old friend. I would have to walk right past him and I was dreading it, but before I could, he got up and stopped me.

He threw his arms around me and I threw my arms around him. I kept telling him how sorry I was. I was holding him and started to cry, saying, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry." I didn't want to lose, but I really didn't want him to lose either. And he was holding me and saying, "Don't be sorry. I'm so proud of you." It was over, and we would be friends again.

I took my bow, then ran to Juilliard. Ten blocks uptown, one block west, to give Miss DeLay the news. She could be proud of me now, too.

Suddenly, everything was clear. Playing the violin is what I'd do with my life. Heaven handed me a prize: "You've been through a lot, kid. Here's an international competition."

Everything had changed when I prepared for the Naumburg, and now everything changed again. I made my first recording. Between September 1981 and May 1982, I played a hundred concerts in America, made one trip to Europe, then two months of summer festivals. And people asked me back.

There was a great deal of anxiety playing in Europe for the first time. But I was able to rely on my self-confidence to pull me through.

Self-confidence onstage doesn't mean a lack of nerves backstage. The stakes had increased. This wasn't practice anymore, this was my life. I'd stare into a dressing-room mirror and say, "Nadja, people have bought tickets, hired baby-sitters, you've got to calm down; go out there and prove yourself."

Every night I'd prove myself again. My life work had truly begun.

(2,054 words)

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