In the basement of Orchestra Hall a young girl drums her leg with her fingers, practicing an arpeggio. Another girl listens to a Walkman, trying to memorize a portion of a piece of music. A small boy tucks a violin under his chin and starts to tune it. The other people in the room glare at him, and he puts the violin down. At a table in the back two boys play a game of chess, and at another table two girls in their early teens, Katherine Lee and Eva Huang, talk about playing football.
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The competitors are generally mellow and good-natured. Most of the relatives are supportive, although some are too caught up in the spirit of competition. “Tell Sissy to bring the Beethoven! It’s in the car!” a woman says frantically into a pay phone. Another woman compulsively plucks pieces of lint off her son’s blazer. One man nervously flips and catches a quarter after his son is sent off to a practice room to warm up for the auditions, which are about to begin.
“I can’t believe I’ve missed five weeks of football,” says Katherine Lee, her hands folded in her lap.
“We don’t really feel competitive because we’re students of the same teacher,” says Huang. “If somebody else wins, it’s one of your friends.”
“Do you know a lot about the French horn?” her mother asks. Then without pausing she says “It’s one of the most difficult instruments to play. Helen wants to play French horn with the Chicago Symphony some day. She’d like to do that.”
“Where’d everybody go?” a young boy asks. “They all disappear back to Hong Kong?”
“You probably shouldn’t talk to him,” the mother of ten-year-old Jeremy Black, who did not qualify for the strings scholarship money, tells me. “He’s a little disappointed right now.” The boy is sitting off in one corner, kicking his feet back and forth absentmindedly.
