Admission 33 cents, including war tax. But this is worth--well, it is what
the novelists call an illuminating experience. This gentleman of music
whose fingers have for twenty years absorbed the souls of Beethoven and
Sarasate, Liszt and Moussorgski, this aristocrat of the catgut is
posturing sardonically before the three bored fates. He is pouring twenty
years, twenty well-spent years, into a tawdry little ballad. Ah, how our
baron's fiddle sings! And the darkened faces in front hum to themselves:
"When you're flirt-ing with another, do you ever think--of--me."

Yes, my tired-faced baron, there's a question. Do you? We, out front, all
have our little underworlds in which we live sometimes while music plays
and beautiful things come to our eyes. And yours? This tin-pan alley
ballad throbbing liquidly from the strings of your fiddle--"When you're
flirt-ing with another do you ever think--of--me?" Of the twenty years,
the twenty well-spent years? Of the soul that your fingers captured? Of
the dream that took form in your firm wrist?

And now the chorus once more. In double stops. In harmonics. With
arpeggios thrown in. And once more, largo. Sure and full. Sobbing organ
notes, whimpering grace notes. Superb, baron! And done with a half smile
at the darkened faces out front. The tired faces that blinked stolidly at
Viotti. A smile at the orchestra leader who stands with his mouth open
waiting as if the song were still in the air.

Applause. All of us this time. More applause. Say this guy can fiddle, he
can. Come on, baron, another tune. The tired faces yammer for another
ditty. "Traeumerei." All right, let her go, Paganini. And after that the
"Missouri Waltz."

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