Portable phonograph

The Portable phonograph is a gift from Richard Vanderwhile to Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov, and a means of bringing a distant concert into the Metropol attic. Its arrival turns a carefully packed machine and a single record into an encounter with music, memory, and performance across time and distance.

Gift and presentation

After returning to the attic, Count Alexander Ilyich Rostov finds a black leather case on Grand Duke Demidov’s desk. About a foot square and six inches high, it has a leather handle and chrome clasps. A note addressed to the Count in an unfamiliar script explains that Richard Vanderwhile is going home for a spell and has left the case for his use; Richard directs particular attention to the uppermost sleeve, which he considers relevant to their conversation.

Construction and use

Inside the case is the Portable phonograph, accompanied by a small stack of records in brown paper sleeves. The electrical cord is folded into a compartment at the back. The Count unravels it, plugs the player into a wall socket, removes the selected record from its sleeve, places it on the turntable, throws the switch, and cues the needle. The sequence makes the machine’s portability practical rather than absolute: the player travels in its case, but in the attic it must be connected to the room’s electrical supply.

The recording and its effect

The uppermost disc is identified as a recording of Vladimir Horowitz playing Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto at Carnegie Hall in New York. The Count had seen Horowitz perform in Moscow in 1921, less than four years before the pianist went to Berlin for an official concert with foreign currency tucked into his shoes. The record therefore brings into the attic a performance by a pianist whose earlier appearances the Count remembers, while its label locates this particular concert in New York.

The Count sits on Sofia’s bed to listen. Before the music begins, the recording gives him the muted voices, coughs, and last rustle of an audience settling; then comes silence, followed by heartfelt applause as the performer presumably takes the stage. He holds his breath. The phonograph’s first effect is thus not simply to reproduce a concerto: it lets the listener hear the charged interval before a performance starts, turning an absent concert hall into an audible presence in the room.