The rehearsal room

The school orchestra had forty minutes before the hall was needed for an assembly. Everyone knew this because Mr Bell had said it three times. He stood beside the piano with his sleeves rolled up, tapping the score with a pencil. Anya sat at the back of the violins. She had practised the difficult passage until her fingertips hurt, but the notes still seemed to change places whenever the whole orchestra played. Next to her, Joel turned a page with an expression of complete confidence. Anya tucked her thumb beneath the edge of the music stand.

They began six bars before the passage. The cellos entered first, then the flutes, then the violins moving together towards the quick notes. Anya lost her place. She found it again just as the others stopped. Mr Bell lowered his hands. Somewhere near the door a chair scraped. He asked the violins to play alone. Anya could feel Joel looking at the top of her bow. She wished the next instruction would be addressed to anybody else. Instead, Mr Bell pointed his pencil towards their row and said her name.

‘You're arriving late every time,’ he said. Anya stared at the black notes. They seemed suddenly as unhelpful as footprints after rain. ‘Have you practised this?’ She nodded. ‘Then show me.’ The room was so quiet that she could hear the brass players emptying water from their instruments. She began, missed the same change and stopped. Mr Bell set his pencil on the piano. Anya wanted him to shout; at least that would have given her something outside herself to dislike. He walked to the back of the room and crouched beside the stand.

He asked her to tap the rhythm on her knee. She did it correctly. Then he covered the next line of the score with a sheet of paper and asked her to play only the first four notes. They came easily. He moved the paper one bar further. ‘Don't look for the mistake before you've reached it,’ he said, quietly enough that Joel leaned closer to hear. Anya tried again. This time she reached the end of the passage. Mr Bell did not announce a triumph. He stood up, returned to the piano and asked everyone to begin from the same place.

When the violins entered, Anya watched the notes immediately ahead of her bow. She played the passage correctly, then nearly missed the long note that followed because she was listening for a mistake. Mr Bell held his hand steady until they finished. ‘Again tomorrow,’ he said. The others began packing away. Anya waited until Joel had left, then asked whether she could keep the sheet of paper. Mr Bell handed it to her. She folded it into the score. Her face was still hot when she crossed the hall, but she was already counting the rhythm under her breath.

Focus on the final three paragraphs, from ‘You’re arriving late’ to the end.

A reader said: ‘Mr Bell’s approach is entirely unkind and leaves Anya less able to succeed.’

To what extent do you agree and/or disagree? Evaluate how the writer presents the teacher’s approach and its effect on Anya, using evidence and analysis of the writer’s methods.