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Phillip T Young Recital Hall
July 23, 2013
It was in the summer of 2013 that, after an interval of some years, I once more encountered my old friend Sherlock Holmes.
After his supposed retirement to Sussex to keep bees, Holmes had become something of a recluse. The real reason for this was to avoid talk about his apparent failure to grow any older. (This I share with him, we suspect as a direct result of our remarkable and terrifying experiences in the case of the Giant Rat of Sumatra, a case for which the world is - still - not ready.)
After the Second World War (during which, Holmes once casually remarked, he consulted "at BP"), my friend left his native land: "if I can no longer be a Victorian Detective in London", he remarked to me, "I shall go to where I can". Since which time I had received an intermittent series of letters from Australia, Hong Kong and other places named for our late sovereign.
But it was in British Columbia, Canada, where Holmes had for the last few years been living quietly on Southern Vancouver Island under an assumed name, that I finally met him once more.
That afternoon in late July, my cab pulled up outside his lodgings in Butcher Street. In response to my knock, the door was opened by his housekeeper, Mrs. Bay, and I heard a familiar voice call from inside: "Watson! My dear fellow, come in, come in!"
Before I could utter so much as a single word, Holmes remarked: "We have not much time Watson, thanks to your decision to visit Butchart Gardens after travelling to the island on the ferry from Vancouver. Really, could that not have waited?"
"Oh this is too much, Holmes!", I expostulated, "we have not met in years and you begin our renewed conversation with yet another example of your inspired guesswork."
"Nonsense, Watson, I never guess. Guesswork is the scaffolding of the jerry builder. You know my methods. Need I mention the residue of saltwater spray still visible upon your jacket? Or the traces of loam on your boots, of a colour and texture found only in the gardens? But we have no time for that. The game's afoot."
"In the last few days", he continued, "a valuable piece of research, a formula which could, in the right hands, bring relief to the starving millions of the world, has been stolen from the University. The authorities, who have done me the honour of consulting me on the matter, are aware of the identity of the thief's accomplice and have him in custody. They have also narrowed down the range of suspects to a mere handful and we are going to be present this evening when the malefactor is identified."
Before I could reply, the bell rang and a taxi was waiting outside to convey us to our destination.
"But where are we going?" I asked.
"To the concert hall, to hear Basses Loaded!" was his enigmatic reply.
For one whose interest in music has always been that of the enthusiastic amateur, this remark was, to say the least, cryptic. "Who, or what, is basses loaded?" I enquired.
"Well", said Holmes, "you have surely heard of Gary Karr?"
At my negative response, Holmes gave me a withering look: "Watson, Gary Karr is the Paganini, no the Casals of the double bass, the man who can take that enormous, unwieldy instrument and make it sing! He can play six impossible things before breakfast! He has retired from regular performing now, but once a year teaches a summer school, as I believe the expression is, for bassists. It lasts for a month and Basses Loaded is the school's end-of-term concert".
"And this is somehow involved with the recovery of the missing formula?"
"I can tell that we are going nowhere until I explain", sighed my old friend. "Very well. When the authorities ran the thief to ground, on the campus of the university, he was empty-handed. Inspector Bridge of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, was on the scene. According to Bridge, the malefactor was alone in a large, grassy area. But there was something, he said, some unusual marks which led him to believe that some other creature had been involved in the disappearance of the formula, which was contained on what I believe is called a memory card. I asked him to describe these unusual marks; in his own words, 'Mr. Holmes, they were the footprints of a rather small hound!' And that, my dear fellow, will have to suffice for the moment, otherwise we shall be late and that would never do."
We arrived at the Phillip T Young Recital Hall to discover a large and enthusiastic crowd, many of whom, it transpired, were regular attendees of this annual event.
Scarcely had we taken our seats, when two figures took to the stage: Karr himself and his partner, the pianist Harmon Lewis. "Pay special attention to him, Watson. Lewis is a magnificent musician in his own right."
It was only as Lewis began the slow, pulsating chords of Bach's "Erbarm' dich" that I realised that there were some sixteen other bassists arrayed around the hall, so that, when they began playing the glorious chorale melody, the effect was of being immersed in a warm bath of sound.
"I have never heard the like!" I exclaimed to Holmes as it concluded. "Keep listening, Watson!" he replied, "there are more wonders to come."
After the Bach, the small army of bassists assembled on the stage, filling it almost completely. There followed two short pieces by Corelli - solemn and stately - and by Haydn, which were charming and full of that humour which, so I am told, is one of the Austrian composer's trademarks.
The majority of the players now left the stage to four young Japanese players - Yumiko Hayashi, Masanori Ichikawa, Ayaka Katsumata and Noriko Okamoto - calling themselves "The Real Tokyo Quartet", who played a three-movement work by one David Funk (even Holmes could not tell me anything about him). I particularly enjoyed the wistful dance which was the gigue.
"Now pay attention, Watson", said Holmes, "you are about to witness something which is available today to the merest handful of people: the Karr/Lewis duo, one of the great musical partnerships of the last half-century."
Together they played a sonata by Edvard Grieg, whom I recall seeing conduct on one of his visits to London. The sonata, Holmes later told me, was composed for the cello and Karr played it at the original pitch.
In all the concerts which I had, voluntarily or not, attended with Holmes, I had rarely, if ever, heard the like of this performance. From the turbulent piano passages and noble solo melody which open the work, I was engrossed by the quality of the music-making and by the extraordinary rapport between the two musicians (I discovered later that they had been performing together for more than four decades). I began to see what Holmes meant.
The interval was approaching: both before and after we heard works by Giovanni Bottesini, one of Karr's predecessors in that he was a great bass virtuoso.
He was also a composer, although surely nobody would claim that he was a great one.
Masanori Ichikawa joined Karr for Passione Amarosa, a piece which seemed to me to be a cross between an Italian opera and a highwire juggling act. Although their virtuosity was never in question - indeed, both players appeared, on several occasions, to be defying the laws of physics - neither seemed to take the music too seriously, in fact, there were occasions when I, and others, found it difficult not to laugh out loud.
Daniel Carias and João Pedro Lucas, both from Portugal, opened the second half of the evening with Bottesini's Grand Duo, a somewhat more serious piece but of equal difficulty, or so I should imagine. "An interesting pairing", remarked Holmes, "both excellent players, one has the slight edge in technique, but the other has it in pure beauty of tone."
I must confess that from early on in the proceedings, I was totally engrossed in the music, perhaps more so than on any previous occasions, and that the matter of the purloined formula had slipped my mind.
Had I the appropriate words, then, I could write volumes about the ensemble's playing of Takuzo Inagaki's Contrasts Suite (plaintive, sombre and charming by turns) or the delightful arrangement (I gather there is very little music which was actually composed for an ensemble of basses) of "My Lord, What a Morning" by a certain David Clenman, who was present in the hall.
More arrangements appeared in the form of two popular songs: "Love Me Tender", in which Karr was joined by the three alluring young Japanese ladies mentioned earlier, and the Air from County Derry (better-known to my generation as "Danny Boy") in which he was partnered by Victoria (that name again!) Jones, from New Zealand.
At some point during all of this, I was astonished to hear the sound of a dog's uttering a single bark, somewhere offstage. I glanced at Holmes, who merely smiled.
Shortly thereafter, as the ensemble, joined once again by Lewis, began their final number, Scott Joplin's Maple Leaf Rag, two dogs strolled onto the stage. "The Karr-Lewis Kanines", said Holmes, "Shiro is the white and Sumi the darker of the pair; their appearance is traditional, although this is Sumi's debut: his predecessor, Shinju, died earlier this year."
The concert ended in a standing ovation, as well it might.
Almost immediately, Holmes led me outside the building, to where we found a taciturn, but seemingly triumphant, Inspector Bridge. "You were right Mr. Holmes!" he asseverated, "the villain attempted to snatch the elder dog Shiro during the second half of the concert. What I don't understand is why he barked like that."
"There is a ready explanation, Bridge. As we know, the thief, realising that he was cornered and seeing some of the KarrKamp participants out walking the dogs, took advantage of Shiro's good nature and persuaded him to swallow the card containing the formula. You spotted the pawprints on the ground and they, together with the three white hairs I found nearby, established Shiro, who is an American Eskimo, as the most likely candidate."
"But how did you know about Shiro?" I asked.
"Watson, as you should know by now, I make it my business to know everything which might be of importance to my investigations, no matter how trivial. And this is where the plot stumbled: the thief, knowing how long food takes to pass through the digestive system of the dog, was prepared to wait until this evening to kidnap him. What he did not realise, though, was that the dog, although constitutionally able to digest most things, cannot do so with a titanium polymer, from which the card's secure container was fabricated. The result being that Shiro regurgitated the card within minutes of swallowing it and it has been safely in my possession ever since."
"But", I could not help but enquire, "what about the curious incident of the dog in the show-time?"
"The dog merely barked during the show-time", replied the great detective.
"But Holmes, surely that was the curious incident!"
"Come Watson, if a dog has swallowed what it believed to be a treat, only to bring it back within minutes, how would expect him to react to the man who gave him the treat, when that man appears sometime later and attempts to lead him away? He barked, of course. Fortunately, Inspector Bridge's officers were on hand to apprehend the thief and calm Shiro."
"And all's well that ends well, thanks to you Mr. Holmes" said the Inspector.
"And the villains' scheme failed because of their incomplete knowledge of the dog's digestive system", said Holmes.
"Holmes, you mean the whole thing was..."
"Alimentary, my dear Watson."
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