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Music Webmaster Len Mullenger
© David
Wright
Ph.D
This article, or any part of it, must not be
reproduced in part or in whole in any way whatsoever without prior written
consent of the author.
Ngoc was born on 17 August 1947 in Viet Nam. Her father was Vietnamese and her mother was Chinese. Surprisingly for an Eastern family she was an only child.
They lived in Da Nang where her father Mr Niash was a bank official. Here they had an idyllic existence at the foot of the Marble Mountains and close to a very lovely beach in an area devoted to Buddhism and nearby were the sacred sites of Singhapeira and Indrapura. The French had tried to convert the people to Roman Catholicism and interfered with the local customs and culture. They renamed Da Nang, Tourane.
I could never say Ngoc’s name so I called her Jacqui after the American actor J Carroll Niash who had a television series in which he played the Chinese detective Charlie Chan.
I met Jacqui in September 1965. She was a student at RCM (Royal College of Music) where she was studying the cello. I was an external student of composition with Humphrey Searle and I played the piano. In those days I was very proficient.
Many instrumentalists had to find an accompanist and the relationship between any duo, if it was to be successful, has to be very special indeed for it involves musicality, personality and expression. There are duos which fail and break up because the performers are not at one ... and some musicians can be temperamental and unreasonable. Interpretation can also be a problem. One player may see a piece in a completely different way from the other.
The notice board at RCM often advertised for accompanists and Ngoc did so but she could not find anyone who shared the same sympathy with the music. In the middle of September 1965 I played in a concert and chose the F sharp Sonata of Brahms. Unknown to me, Ngoc was in the audience and as Brahms had composed two fine cello sonatas which are in the repertoire of all good cellists, she approached me after the concert to be her pianist. I explained that I only came to London some weekends, to which she sweetly replied, "Well, we will have to work hard at weekends."
She was a stunning-looking girl but did not regard herself as the beauty that she was. She was five feet five, slim and with very dark brown hair. Her face was also slim and neat. When I first saw her she had two plaits that came in front of her. She always wore long oriental dresses with high collars. In the summer she was bare-armed but not so in the winter, of course.
She was very graceful, soft-spoken and courteous. Her manners were always dignified. She did not engage in or listen to any worthless conversation, and in this and many other things, we were compatible.
Our first music-making session was unforgettable. We played through the Brahms’ E minor Sonata without any breaks and immediately were musically at one. We did the same with Beethoven’s Op 69, a gem of a piece. And this was also played as if we had been playing it together for years. We went out and had a meal together and all the time Ngoc was radiant. We exchanged addresses and phone numbers and the next day met for another musical session. We played the Dvorák Concerto without hesitation and in the slow passage at the end of the finale Ngoc’s tears caused her cheeks to shine. What an elegant player she was; her whole body was in action and the cello was a part of her, her very soul. Instinctively, we knew exactly what we were both thinking musically and in the two years that we were together we did not disagree on any music or musical interpretation.
In other matters we were in complete agreement and these matter covered a wide range of subjects from the modesty of women to the abhorrence of all violence, cruelty and war. We loved Chinese food and Ngoc prepared a Vietnamese meal for me on one occasion. I remember the fish sauce known as nuoc mam because I had to ask Ngoc not to use garlic but the formula of chilli, lime juice, sugar and pepper was appetising. The use of fresh herbs made any dish very tasty - lemon grass, basil, coriander, parsley, mint, ginger, lime and laksa leaf. Ngoc would tell me that fish was popular in Viet Nam and that, when she was young, meat was sometimes hard to come by. Apparently the French regime and the manipulative cruelty of Roman Catholicism had made something of a lasting impact.
Every weekend we were together and also at holiday times. She was always beautiful and a joy to be with. She was gentle and sweet but not weak; she had no grand empty gestures but was a lovely young woman of a temperate disposition. Yet she was a sensuous person and, like me, had a pointed way of saying things. Some students asked her what she thought of the Beatles. She replied, "This is a music college and I am studying music. I will happily discuss music with you and so I will not be discussing the Beatles." She was not being malicious but very courteous. Once she was asked why she always wore long dresses and would not wear a miniskirt which was the fashion. "I am keeping myself for the man I will marry. Only he will see what will become his." She would not join in the ‘rag’ days, the term days where dares and practical jokes were not only permitted but encouraged. Ngoc would talk briefly of the dignity of human behaviour and the need for consistency in behaviour so that no misleading impression was ever given. "How can you respect the professor of singing who sings regularly in church and on one of the ‘rag’ days acts stupidly and runs across Westminster Bridge half dressed as a plucked chicken?" My sentiments exactly.
But we were not miserable ‘stick in the muds’. We laughed and had fun but it was exclusive to us. I fulfilled an ambition to ride an elephant at London Zoo and the inside of my legs were sore for days. For the occasion Ngoc wore trousers and we shared the elephant, who was called Tiny. We made ghastly faces at each other when we played through the Elgar Cello Concerto after reducing ourselves to fits of uncontrollable laughter that produced tears to our respective eyes. "It’s such an awful piece," Jacqui would say, "I have to play it occasionally to remind myself how ghastly it is."
When we met Sir William Walton he expressed his repugnance at this concerto and introduced us to the concerto of Shostakovitch which we both began to love. Willie said, "Now there is a man who can write for the cello." Ngoc and I also played Walton’s concerto which has none of the many weaknesses of the Elgar.
Every so often each student at RCM had to play a concerto with the college orchestra. Ngoc chose the Dvorák, the finest cello concerto of them all and insisted that I conduct it. The director was not the most understanding man but Humphrey sorted him out.
The night of the concert came. It was to be an all Dvorák programme. The Carnival Overture was to be followed by the concerto and after the interval the Fourth Symphony in which Jacqui joined the cellos. Her playing of the concerto was faultless and I had difficulty paying attention to conducting the orchestra. The performance, which I still have on tape, is exemplary. This masterpiece will never be played better. And I say this not because it was Ngoc’s playing or because of my conducting but because this performance penetrates the soul of the work. Several well-known cellists who were present enthused about the performance. Derek Simpson said, "It will never be played better." Joan Dickson, who was one of her two professors of cello, commented, "If I had that girl’s looks and could play like that my fortune would be made." Jacqui liked the praise but did not wallow in it; we walked along the embankment discussing our next project. We had been asked to give a recital at a Kensington music society and had to choose a programme.
"Let’s play a programme of unfamiliar works," Ngoc beamed, "like the Chopin and the Rachmaninov sonatas."
"But they favour the piano," I protested.
"Okay, we’ll play one by Casella, one by Martinu and, of course, one by Beethoven."
"The A major?"
She smiled sweetly and that smile said yes.
What a snobby event it was. Everyone was dressed smartly, indeed overdressed. Some possessed miniature binoculars. If they had wanted to know the colour of my socks I would have told them!
About three minutes into the first piece Jacqui and I stopped. The mutterings in the audience did likewise. I addressed them.
"The composers of these pieces wrote for cello and piano; there are no vocal parts so could we just have the cello and the piano?"
There was a hush. And we started again. Music of quality is to be listened to, not just heard or to be an accompaniment to social gossip or society’s whims. We were invited to many other venues to give recitals and we were always enterprising. On one evening in Bromley we played all five of the Beethoven sonatas and the Kakadu Variations to tremendous applause. I cannot begin to tell of the sheer magic and joy of that concert. We were oblivious to the hall and the audience. We were only aware of Beethoven and of each other.
After the concert, and in accordance with the usual custom, there was a party to which we did not stay. People had listened to good music - why spoil it by endless chatter and alcohol? In any case Ngoc and I wanted some time on our own. A light covering of snow had fallen and we walked through Hyde Park. Ngoc stood me under a tree and shook snow from the branches on to me. There was a snowball fight and we bought a couple of hot dogs and discussed our next recital which was going to be a first for us. Kashala Nimboto, a violinist, was to join us to play piano trios. She wanted us to play the Schubert Bb trio but Ngoc and I were not in sympathy with the music. Nor were we enchanted with the Tchaikovsky but we undertook it along with Beethoven’s Archduke which went very well.
By March 1966 Ngoc and I walked hand in hand. At the start of early summer we would walk with our arms around each others waists. And we became the subject of abuse from a minority. Jacqui was called a ‘geek’ and a ‘VC’. I was called a ‘geek lover’ and a ‘communist sympathiser’. Ngoc was not political; she was more concerned about the plight of her people not their politics. She agreed with my father’s statement, "People matter more than politics." We ignored the abuse even though it sometimes hurt. Jacqui would say, "I cannot help where I was born." What was equally upsetting was that a white man dared to be hand-in-hand with a communist ‘geek’.
We learned a great deal about people. We saw poor Asian people sitting in Hyde Park eating from cans of cat or dog food. We saw the arrogance of some of the people that lived in Belgravia and on one occasion we walked through Soho where Ngoc was horrified to see neon signs advertising striptease and sex shows. "Do these women actually take all their clothes off?" she asked me incredulously. And when she saw prostitutes on the streets she was dumbstruck. "What is wrong with the culture and the morals of the West?" she asked. There was no answer to that then, nor is there now.
Often we went to the theatre and sometimes Humphrey came too but, because he was such a gentleman, he would sit elsewhere but later invite us backstage to meet the cast. The list of people we met was endless and many of the actors agreed to come to our recitals. I can remember James Mason and Michael Hordern sitting in one of our concerts. Margaret Rutherford came once and spent some time during one piece rummaging in her bag for toffees which ‘helped her to concentrate’.
Franz Reizenstein asked us if we would perform his Cello Sonata. On the day we met him his toupee had slipped and it was difficult not to laugh but he was a charming man. His sonata had a demanding piano part and there was a problem with balance which I do not think the composer resolved. It was a good piece but rather academic in the style of musical correctness. We called the composer ‘Rise and Shine’. Who says that professionals do not have a sense of humour?
Occasionally we would do something that was unusual for us. We saw The Sound of Music on stage which was vastly superior to the film largely because Julie Andrews was not in it. There was one song, How Can Love Survive? that was in the show but not the film and it was the best number. We also saw Hello Dolly with Mary Martin and the simply awful Michael Crawford. We were more at home in the Forest of Arden with Shakespeare’s Rosalind or in trying to understand the daughters of King Lear which play I have always believed to be Shakespeare’s masterpiece.
Back at home on the Isle of Wight I was a member of the Wight Vintage Players and we produced two Shakespeare plays a year which we performed in each of the high schools. My friend Bernard Wynne, the drama teacher at Bishop Lovett and a fellow enthusiast of the music of Webern, was a leading light and my French master Jim Raggett took small parts. I would compose the music for the productions and my music for Henry IV was very successful. I found a Sandown High School student Carolyn Fallon to play the violin and viola. The wife of the vicar of St Johns, Ryde, Mrs Whitehead, played the piano and Brian Thomas played the pedal timpani. I was keen to write for Brian as I was studying the ‘timps’ with James Blades at the Royal Academy of Music (the RAM).
Carolyn had the disadvantage of being in a wealthy family and she lived at Luccombe. They were the sort of family where you never wore the same thing twice or, if you were a visitor to their home, you were afraid to sit down in case you dented a cushion. The few times I went there to collect or return Carolyn, she had to make cake for me as I was her visitor. It introduced me to that ridiculous social practise of having to nurse a cup and saucer and eat cake at the same time and have a serviette for the cake and a serviette for the saucer. Since my eye accident of 1957 I did have a problem with balance. Carolyn was very attractive and she knew it and that is what made her unattractive to me. She was incredibly fussy; she never had a hair out of place; she agonised over what to wear, not only clothes but make-up. She also liked to show her legs and I have seen her measure the length of her skirt and sit before a mirror crossing and uncrossing her legs.
Vanity, all is vanity saith the preacher.
When I was not with Jacqui she would sometimes go swimming with her friend Sally Wendkos but only on ladies night when no men would be about. This was before the voyeuristic days of balconies from which to view and glass panelling or see-through pools. Jacqui believed in the modesty of women as advocated by strict Moslems, although she was not a Moslem. I had the same opinions although I realise that they will probably appear archaic to most people. Those who disagree with such views often invent false accusations against us who they dismiss as prudes or perverts, or both! There is this curious notion that if you object to perverts then you are one yourself. It is an absurd suggestion. I object to violence but I am not a violent man; I object to bad language but I do not use it; I abhor the abuse and misuse of children and women but I am neither a child molester nor a womaniser.
1966 saw England win the world cup in football and Jacqui and I spent the summer touring Wales, God’s country. To be in the mountains and by the lakes, to see spectacular scenery, to hear Welsh choirs, there are none better, to lie in the sun and the scented grass was far better than the chaotic noise of London. We would look down from some lofty height at the only road in sight and see one car an hour. It was the nearest place to heaven we will ever know this side of the grave.
One day Jacqui took her cello up a green verdant hill and gave me a private recital of Bach’s third unaccompanied suite and Kodaly’s Sonata for solo cello, one of the monumental works of the cello repertoire. The music was lovely, Wales was lovely but the countryside was awake because of the beauty that was in Ngoc’s face.
Some things are hard to explain and even harder to understand. Jacqui and I never had sex together; we never slept together. When we toured Wales we had separate rooms. We were very much in love but our love was pure and unsullied. Only a musician will understand the non-sexual orgasms experienced in playing music particularly at tremendous climaxes that exist in music. It can be far more exciting than sexual intercourse. There are some moments in music, such as Jacqui and I experienced in our many performances, when feelings and emotions in the music and in the physical activity of performance that reach the peaks of incomparable ecstasy and therapeutic magnificence. Only a professional musician will know this!
Back at college our studies went on unabated. It was only natural for me to write a cello concerto for Jacqui and so I planned a 45 minute work of three equal movements and began to work on the slow movement first. Other students wrote works for us which, I suppose, was flattering but some of the pieces were simply awful. We were also privileged to see the great cellists of the day in concert. William Pleeth was note perfect and had impeccable intonation; Paul Tortelier had the enviable ability to make a work live and in a three or four movement work had an uncanny gift of making the work sound complete even if the movements were so varied. Pierre Fournier had a wonderful tome and warmth. Frankly, Jacqueline du Pré was admired for her good looks and being a male magnet; she was a rather wild player and very self-indulgent. Against our better judgement we saw her play the Elgar which usually takes about twenty-seven minutes. She took it to a painful thirty-five minutes; it was really nauseating like a cheap Hollywood tearjerker. Alan Rawsthorne was in the audience that night and said, "Bloody awful piece. It should be a criminal offence to write such rubbish!"
He disappeared into the bar to fortify himself after the severe musical trauma of the evening.
We saw Zara Nelsova execute the Schumann and, although it is not a great work, we loved every minute of it. I have a recording of this performance and when I play it, I can see Ngoc next to me, smiling one minute and concentrating intently the next. I wish she were sitting next to me now listening to it.
But the finest cellist, without any doubt, was the Hungarian Janós Starker who had been first cellist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in the days of their greatest conductor, Fritz Reiner. Starker was criticised for his technique by some artistes but I believe it was because they were jealous of him. We were not going to attend his first concert because he was going to play the Elgar but we went and I had never heard it played like this before or since. Starker ignored all the nobilimentes and when the solo part is in unison with violins he did not play. He did not linger over any passage and there was no rubato. The long slow section in the finale he took much quicker and this was partly how he cut three or four minutes off the usual duration. The audience did not know what to make of the performances and the newspapers reviewed the performance unkindly. My experience is the reviewers are often are prejudiced and do not know what they are talking about.
His next concert was of the Dvorák and it brought the house down. Attention to every detail and every nuance was remarkable and I noticed how Ngoc always played it this way as well. After the concert we went backstage and met him. He gave Ngoc a lesson. She actually played his cello. We were there to way past midnight and enjoyed four hours of fascinating music and study. His agent flustered about getting him back to his hotel.
"I’ll go home with David and Jacqui," he said. And I remember the three of us sitting in the back of a taxi driving in Park Lane.
It is a curious thing about serious professional musicians that they do not tolerate fans or hero-worshippers as ‘pop’ musicians do but rather both recognise and help the young musicians who are genuine and take their art seriously.
Talking of art, Jacqui and I visited many art galleries. We were amazed at the tremendous amount of nudity that existed in art. Not only was it unnecessary but completely senseless having no basis in reality. Here is a group of shepherds tending their flock and an approaching shepherdess totally nude. And there were so many other equally ridiculous examples. There were famous historical scenes in which the characters were naked on canvas whereas in actual fact they certainly would not have been at the time. Certain Biblical scenes were the subject of some paintings deliberately so the artist could paint nudes.
There is an unforgivable hypocrisy about art and the public’s support of it. An explicit girlie magazine will be condemned as pornographic and yet a painting of a young nude female in art could not possibly be pornographic! We can look at nudes in an art gallery and take our children in to be voyeurs too, and pay an entrance fee. Yet if a child looks at Playboy, it must be taken away and he be punished.
Artists were the first pornographers whether they were the primitive cavemen or the Roman and Greek sculptors who manufactured male nudes out of stone not only to be pornographic but to advocate homosexuality. If a man exposes himself it is an offence for which he can go before the Courts. But if an artist draws or paints male genitalia it is art and not an offence. But if a woman poses nude as a model so that an artist can paint her and probably see more of her than someone who disrobes her it is legal. Hypocrisy!
We were at an art gallery once when a party of schoolgirls arrived. They were about twelve years old. They giggled at male nudity and one girl said, "That’s the first naked man I’ve seen." Others agreed ... and yet if a man even for one split second exposed himself to one of these girls it would be an offence since it would be indecent.
It must be remembered that pornography is defined as that which can arouse sexual and erotic feelings and is the display of sexuality. I can think of works of art that do that.
But the argument rages that no art is pornographic as all art is claimed to be acceptable and ‘pure’ since it is a skill therefore it cannot ever be immoral. Very well, I am a cat burglar and this activity requires a high level of skill. As it is a skill it is acceptable and not a crime.
The thing about Ngoc and I was that we agreed on all things but not to please each other. It was instinctive. There was one issue that could have divided us. I was a Christian and until she came to this country Jacqui knew nothing about Jesus Christ or Christianity. It raised all sorts of dilemmas. If one receives eternal life in Heaven by believing in Jesus Christ how could one gain everlasting life if one had never heard of Christ? The doctrine of the Calvinists was, "Too bad! She’ll burn in Hell!"
Jacqui and I discussed the faith and she asked many questions and came to be a believer. But there were still questions that could not be answered. Whose fault was it that Christianity was not widespread in Asia whereas it was in Britain and the USA?
In the latter part of 1966 Jacqui became increasingly worried because she had not heard from her parents in Viet Nam. The US Marines had been there for over a year and she feared for her parents as the war was continuing. She could not watch the television and hated the fact that this war was known as the television war. She never heard from them. Stoically, she remained dedicated to her studies with her professor, Anna Shuttleworth. We continued to make music and give recitals.
I only saw Ngoc angry once. She was rehearsing the Greig Sonata with me when the A string snapped. Some fellow students were present and one said, "Pity it wasn’t her G string!" Another said, "She would not know what a G string was."
I left the piano stool and told them to go. "This is a private rehearsal," I shouted. They left. One Yorkshire girl poked out her tongue and said to me, "Communist sympathiser!" This was Mandy Leadbetter.
Ngoc said, "David, I wish you would catch that insolent girl and bend her over your knee, lift her dress and slap her bottom!"
I was shocked. Jacqui had never spoken like this before. "And I’ll get an audience to watch!" she said.
She was really angry ... but still beautiful.
That Christmas was very special. We sang carols in a parish church which boasted a superb organ; we went to a couple of schools and the carols were accompanied by Jacqui and I. And on Christmas Eve we stood very close together holding each other tight kissing each other as Rachmaninov’s splendid Piano Concerto No 4 played on the gramophone. Ngoc was wearing her velvet navy blue dress and had her hair up with navy blue ribbon trailing behind her. Christmas day dawned with peals of church bells and Ngoc feeling very soft and feminine close to me.
The next year dawned with many exciting prospects. In March we visited Cromer in Norfolk for my friend Leslie’s wedding to Jain and to say goodbye before they went off to new Zealand ... or was it Australia? Leslie was studying law and Jain psychology but they loathed the British weather. He had plenty of money and could therefore achieve anything he so desired. Sometimes I was out of touch with him for years, apart from a Christmas card or rare telephone call. In thirty two years they came back to the UK twice, 1971-2 and 1993-4, I think.
The slow movement of my Cello Concerto was played through with great success. On one of his rare visits to London, Britten listened to it and made some insulting remarks. But that was him! He was a thoroughly unlikeable man! Ngoc and I decided to take the wind out of his sails and frustrate him and so we played his Cello Sonata to him as a matter of sight-reading. He was flabbergasted. "Rostropovich, for whom I wrote it, took days to get it right and I don’t believe that you’ve never played it before."
"Well we haven’t. Nor will we again," I said. Fellow students burst into spontaneous applause. Britten was furious. He reminded me of my boss at the solicitor’s office. He stormed out. He really was a horrid man and I hated him and it was not because he was homosexual but because of his extreme arrogance and insulting behaviour. Jacqui and I discussed composers thereafter on a simplistic basis. Do well-mannered, clean-living composers compose the best quality music? We discovered that the three composers whose music we disliked the most were all immoral, decadent, arrogant, pompous or toadies. But the comparison did not always work. We discovered some composers who were honourable and decent in their lives but whose music was oftentimes poor in quality.
During the summer of 1967 we had a grand tour of Britain. We both had rail cards and travelled from place to place without any prearranged plans. There were places we loved and places we hated.
On a train approaching Rotherham, Ngoc and I were looking at a Bible and discussing a particular matter. Opposite was a priest attending to his rosary. He studied us intently and then spoke.
"Are you Catholics?" he asked.
"No," replied Jacqui, "we are Christians."
We enjoyed the wilds of Northumberland and of all the cities we visited we preferred Carlisle. We crossed the border, spent a day in Stirling and went to John o’Groats.
"It looks like the end of the world," said Jacqui.
Cornwall was exquisite. No busy roads; it was quaint and had an easy pace of life. But wherever we went Ngoc was viewed as a curiosity and not as a person.
In September we went to Swansea and with a youth orchestra, who were very good, we played the Dvorák and Beethoven’s Seventh and premiered my Poems of Love and Rain. Afterwards we walked along the Mumbles and watched the sunset.
As Ngoc snuggled into me , she said, "Look, David - the sun is dying."
A month later she was.
On October 10th we played our last recital. Ngoc looked wonderful in her red velvet high-collared dress. We played the Beethoven Op 69 and ended with the heart-rending Elegy of Fauré.
The next day Jacqui went swimming with Sally Wendkos. A few days later she was not quite herself and so could not come to the Peter Katin concert. Against my better judgement and at Jacqui’s insistence I took another girl student who, after the concert tried to seduce me.
When I arrived home at the Bendettos, Alphonse told me that Jacqui was ill and alone and so I went round to see her. She was in great distress lying doubled up on her bed. I asked her if I should get a doctor.
"No, David," she said, "just hold me."
I helped her into bed and I held her. She sobbed.
"David," she said as only she did, "Kiss me!"
I did. Her mouth both tasted and smelt foul. And then she was dead. I was too shocked to cry. I just held her. I could not let her go. How could I?
Jacqui died of candida which had penetrated her blood system and killed her. She had contracted this infection in the swimming pool.
How I cursed swimming pools. "Bomb the lot of them," I once said. Ngoc used to say that they were places for voyeurism and sexual encounters. She called lifeguards, lustguards. And I switched on the television and saw footage of the war in Viet Nam and renewed my abhorrence against all forms of violence, cruelty and war itself.
The Vietnamese consulate in London had to attend to Jacqui’s affairs. We knew nothing of her parents or relatives. They made arrangements to have her cremated.
I went to see the officials. "You are not going to burn my girl," I protested.
Consequently I used my savings to have her buried. And I vowed not to speak of her but retain her in my heart. That is, after all, where she belonged. It has taken me almost thirty years of silence to speak of her now. A swimming pool took her from me but they cannot take away memories, precious memories.
Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows
What are those blue remembered hills
What spires, what farms are those?
This is the land of lost content
I see it shining far
The happy highways where we went
And cannot come again.
But Jacqui is not lost. I know where she is. And, one day the Courts of Heaven will resound to our playing Beethoven together.
© 1996 David Wright Ph.D
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