A Class Act: Flowers From A Fanatic

Sometimes what happens before an event, even way before, is more noteworthy than the event itself. Usually my husband and I drive in style to see the New Jersey Symphony, but with the car in the repair shop, we had to choose a bus that would be very early or way too close to the desired time. We arrived around an hour and a half before, and idly ambled around outside.

As we neared the front entrance, we saw a man carting some flowers along the hall leading to that entrance. Now this alone would not have drawn much attention except for one fact: this was no jaded delivery person drawing this little wagon filled with white roses tinged with yellow, but a person in his eighties with a great bushy white beard and massively white hair, wearing all black like the musicians. We paused to compliment him on his choice of flowers. Then fact number two came up for why this encounter is worth the attention of my sweet patient readers: After I said,what pretty light yellow flowers, he corrected me in a heavy Russian accent: “These flowers not yellow. They are white. White flowers.” “Oh I see,” I said, wondering at his rude manner and need to be so precise. Not giving in entirely, I negotiated, “White, and a little bit of yellow too.”

As we were about to walk on, he said, “You coming to concert?” (Maybe he liked my pluck in not giving in one hundred percent.) Once we met his qualifications as persons worth talking to, he explained that he was a devoted fan of the Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov who was going to perform the Concerto in F Major by George Gershwin. Then he took out his phone and showed us photos and videos of other venues where he saw this pianist, who so kindly posed for his ardent fan in a couple of the shots. For four days, one after the other, he went to see Trifonov play the same thing in Princeton, New Brunswick, Red Bank, and now Newark. Depending on the locale, each photo showed flowers of another variety, brought so that the pianist would not be seeing the same kind of flowers at each concert! He then told us be would be sitting in the front row today, and he was most pleased to hear we would be in the front as well.

I figured he was so pleased about this information because it proved that we were no riffraff but serious concert goers. We had moved up another notch, from merely attending the concert, to sitting in a choice spot fit for undivided attention to the great Trifonov –who by the way is indeed great; you should hear him. The program says he is a “Grammy winning pianist…whose performances are a perpetual source of wonder.”–

During the intermission, before the pianist was to play, we found out why the fan (who then told us he was named Serge) was so pleased with our location. He knew where to look for us so we could take some photos while he was giving Trifonov the flowers for “very good pictures for me to put in Face Book.” After the pianist stood up to bow at the end, it all happened in a snap: Serge did not stride across the stage to present the flowers as I had been anticipating, but in a flash handed them over from the front row as Trifonov leaned down from the stage to fetch them in one graceful gesture.

After the concert Serge came over to us again to thank us, and a lady overhearing our conversation chirped to all of us, “Trifonov was terrific, but I simply love them all.” To which Serge firmly shook his head, “No. No. It is only Trifonov I follow. No one else.”