The Ghost Sonata (39 page)

 

Fifteen-year-old pianist Julian Graham of Crawling has been declared the winner of Oxford University's Young International Virtuosos Competition. He will receive a prize of 5,000 pounds along with a potentially career-launching debut with the London Symphony Orchestra.

“I'm dead chuffed,” was the winner's response to the news. “I'm in shock, really.”

Judges acknowledged the difficulty of choosing a winner from among the ten finalists in this year's competition. “The environment was fraught with an unusual degree of discord and argument,” commented competition founder and concert pianist Eugene Winterbottom. “At midnight last night, I was certain that this would be the first year we would not be able to declare a winner, but thankfully, by morning, we had all come to an agreement.”

Nigel Waldgrave initially favored the clean, accurate playing of pianist Ming Fong Chen, but Winterbottom countered that her performance was “unoriginal” and “completely derivative of the pianist Lang Lang.”

Further complicating the decision-making process was a surprise musical selection by pianist Wendy Choy, who opted at the last minute to perform an unknown composition by the deceased young pianist Charles Drummond, who had once been a student of Nigel Waldgrave's.

“The performance was top-notch,” Winterbottom stated, “but Miss Choy completely disregarded the competition guidelines for acceptable repertoire.”

Nigel Waldgrave hesitated to comment on Wendy Choy's performance, noting that he had “strong emotions” associated with this music and the untimely death of its composer. He did not feel that he could judge its merits objectively.

Celebrated pianist Rhiannon Maddox disagreed with Choy's disqualification, almost withdrawing in protest at one point in the evening. “If we're committed to rewarding artistry in this competition, it seemed a travesty to disqualify this unique performance based on a technicality.”

Although she failed to win the top prize, Wendy Choy's performance of Charles Drummond's Sonata in A Minor has generated a flurry of interest from Oxford musicians and concertgoers who are keen to know more about the haunting melody and distinctive, modern harmonies written by a young local teen whose life ended four years ago in a car accident. Perhaps most intriguing and bizarre are the claims by Miss Choy of the “paranormal” means by which she and her best friend, Gilda Joyce, a self-proclaimed “psychic investigator,” discovered the music.

“If I couldn't vouch for the authenticity of this music myself,” Nigel Waldgrave commented, “I would have assumed this was merely an attention-seeking prank. As it stands, I have to acknowledge the possibility that these two girls had some psychic connection with a dead musician.”

“This experience has changed me,” Wendy Choy noted. “I didn't win the competition, but it made me see music differently. . . . I guess as something more interesting and mysterious than I realized.”

Gilda Joyce, who also served as a page-turner for the competition, lamented her best friend's loss of the winning prize, but offered their investigative services to potential clients throughout the British Isles at “reasonable rates.”

“Solving mysteries is what we do,” said Miss Joyce. “And we're always willing to travel.”