All of Hannibal's senses were on alert from the moment the music actually began. He was acutely aware of the silence from the audience. The held breath, the lack of normal human twitches. They were all rapt, refusing - it seemed - to even blink. There was an ethereal quality to the Opera House that went beyond the notes floating in the air. Hannibal had never witnessed anything like it.
He had also never heard anything like the music being played.
The youthful doctor sitting on the bench was remarkable. Better, Hannibal thought, that he had been at that age, though it might have just been the moment that allowed such a lapse in overconfidence. He had also never been given music like this to perform. He had never been a show performer at all, and this boy had given part of himself to the music. No, Hannibal was sure that this one was better at this age than he had been himself. For all these reasons. It wasn't anything he would lose face over. He knew that he and the boy differed in a lot of ways, this just happened to be one of them.
His eyes closed so that he, too, could focus on the notes. Not needing his eyes to tell him what the audience was doing was quite helpful in this. His mind split in two, gathering for him the information he wanted from everybody else, including Erik, and reveling in the composition being played.
Hannibal was quite glad that he'd been invited to witness this. To hear the rest of the perfection out loud, the music he was forbidden himself to play by the very man sitting at the piano now. He thought he might have died in agony if he'd never gotten to bathe in the completion of it.