Last week, I stood in the room where I once played in piano recitals. Although time has altered the room’s purpose, its unchanged appearance brought a flood of memories.
Long before two world wars marred the twentieth century, my then teen-aged Grandfather learned to play the French horn in Kaiser Wilhelm’s army. At the beginning of the twentieth century, my grandparents emigrated from Germany to America where Grandpa found work in the tool and die industry. Still, he never lost his love of music and was determined his daughter would become the professional musician he never could. To that end, he purchased a baby grand piano made by Aeolian Company in East Rochester (if you’re into makes and models of pianos) and made my mother practice three hours a day. Mom, a pretty terrific pianist by the time she graduated high school, couldn’t wait to find a job and finally have some fun. Grandpa, disappointed she did continue her musical education, declared she would never take possession of the baby grand UNLESS she had a child who played piano.
My fate was sealed before my father even met my mother.
The year I turned seven and could count up to six (kids progressed slower in the mid 20th century), she had my dad knock out a wall in our small post war bungalow, so she could nestle the piano between the dining and living rooms. It was there I practiced “only” an hour each day for the next ten years while Mom became the neighborhood piano teacher and joined the National Piano Teachers Guild.
One year the Guild joined forces with a music store to present a huge concert in the city arena. The store supplied fifty pianos and the Guild provided one hundred students. Mom paired me with one of her students and the two of us joined the other forty nine duos as we practiced our piece for weeks. We were all jammed in a room that was crowded with pianos on the second floor of the music store. Again and again, one hundred kids sweated through that piece while the conductor waved his baton and counted out loud. I can’t recall the name of the composition but I do remember that performance.
We all began together, on the right note and the right beat. Things progressed well until somehow the tempo quickened. We started to go faster. I knew we were ignoring the conductor, but if I slowed, I would have tripped up the others. Instead, 100 kids played faster and faster and faster, like a runaway train, until we all finally crashed onto the last note.
Many years later, when I resumed piano lessons, my teacher suggested I play in a recital. I smiled sweetly and said, “I’m an adult now and can say…..absolutely not.”
