Like Love in a Marriage

The first time I entered an international music competition I was 17. My entire future as a pianist seemed to hinge upon its outcome - and by extension, according to the equation I then lived by, so did my right to exist.

The competition was held in an ancient hall in the Italian seaside town of Senigallia; competitors practised in a nearby music school. As I wandered the school's corridors in search of a piano, the practice of the other contestants snowballed into the most terrifying white noise I had ever heard: part Mephisto Waltz, part Paganini Variations. It was a fearful avalanche of sound, and it threatened to consume me.

On the plane on the way home a woman casually asked my mother where we had been. "My daughter took part in an international piano competition in Italy," she said, "but she was eliminated after the first round."

I sank down in my seat. "You don't need to tell her that," I hissed.

"What do you want me to say, then?"

"Just say I didn't win." I thought I might never recover from the shame.

I recovered sufficiently to enter further competitions, first as a soloist and then with my trio, and after a time it became clear that they were a numbers game. Sometimes they went well; more frequently they did not. Most musicians have a public CV of successes. We also have an alternative CV of failures that we keep tucked away in our back pockets, not to be shared with strangers on aeroplanes.