The Piano and Me

Some of my favorite memories about myself are connected with music. In fact they are of me playing the piano, specifically. So I’ll tell you about them:

The first one was when I was about 13 years old. I was taking piano lessons from a lady named Annette. I was a pretty good pianist by then—I knew that I could play anything I wanted to. (I don't know that quite so much now.) So in addition to my regular piano lesson I decided I would learn the first movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata as a surprise for my teacher. I had ulterior motives: I wanted her to teach me the second and third movements. Anyway, I worked on it for quite a while, learning the notes and fingering; but more importantly, deciding exactly how I wanted the dynamics to sound—where it should be louder or softer, what notes to emphasize, etc. Finally I was happy with it; after my next piano lesson I told Annette that I had a piece for her to listen to. I played it as I’d practiced and she sat very quietly and still through the whole piece. After I finished she was quiet a bit longer, then she said softly, “That was perfect.”

Wow! What a great moment.

When I was 14 years old I got a job as a ballet pianist at a dance studio. (As a side note, my first paycheck was about $82. Pretty exciting for a 14-year-old!) I also took dance lessons there; so between my piano skills and my knowledge of ballet I think I did a very good job. I worked there until I graduated from high school.

Well, occasionally LeAnn (the teacher) would have “stretch days” where she had her students do a lot of stretching and not much of anything else. A lot of us really liked stretch days, but the one exercise most of the students hated was doing the splits. So when it was time to do the splits LeAnn would always ask me to play a funeral dirge—just a slow piece of music appropriate for stretching to. One day I decided that, for a joke, I would learn a real funeral dirge to play the next time she asked for one. Of course it had to be very recognizable as a funeral piece, so I chose Chopin’s Marche Funèbre, Op. 35 (the one they use in cartoons a lot). It took me a few weeks to work it up, and by the time I was ready LeAnn went through a non-stretching spell, so I had to bide my time for a while.

Finally, one day she instructed the students to do the splits; she turned to me and said, “Loralee, a funeral dirge.” I was ready. The class was standing in fifth position, ready to go; LeAnn set the tempo, “Port de bras, one; two...” And I began playing the funeral march. I hadn’t even finished the first measure when LeAnn started laughing—I mean really laughing; and the more I played the more she laughed. She laughed so hard that the little girls who were on the floor in the splits started laughing too. She laughed so hard that she had to go sit down on her chair at the front of the class; and then she laughed so hard that she fell off the chair! Even better was when she had the next class do the same exercise and I played the same piece. The result was almost the same—except that this time she didn’t fall off of her chair. My joke was a tremendous success! And I still laugh when I think of it!

Another story:

In September of 1985, soon after I graduated from high school, I performed a solo piano recital. My teacher, Cheryl, suggested that I should do one and so we spent most of the year preparing for it. (I don't know why I agreed to do it; I always froze up when I played in recitals.) Anyway, I learned and memorized four pieces of music: part of a suite by Handel (five short pieces); Beethoven’s Sonata Pathetique, Op. 1; Polichinelle by Rachmaninoff, and the Overture to Guarany by Carlos Gomes, a Brasilian composer (that one I learned for my mom). I practiced these pieces for at least three hours a day; I could play any of them flawlessly. I loved playing and I'd frequently stop at any place there was a piano—the mall, the church, friends' houses, etc, and play one or more of my songs—all from memory and all perfectly. Unfortunately in our preparations Cheryl and I didn’t factor in nerves. I could play all day knowing that people just happened to be able to hear me; but to have an audience there just specifically to listen to me was another story. So the actual recital didn’t go as well as we'd hoped it would.

I was nervous to begin with, and then a short way into the first piece I made a mistake. So I got even more nervous and things just snowballed from there; I made mistake after mistake and even forgot small passages. The audience (mostly family and friends) loved it anyway and told me how great it was. I thought they were just being very nice to me. We had tape-recorded the recital, but I didn’t want to hear all my horrendous mistakes, and just put the tape away. It wasn’t until about a year later that I actually listened to that recital. And you know, it wasn’t really so bad—in fact, it was really good! I definitely did not play as well as I could have, but it wasn’t nearly as horrible as I had thought either.

Anyway I was in my mom’s house listening to that tape on a summer day when my brother Gregory came over. He heard the music through the window as he came up to the house and he called to me, “Don’t you wish you played that well?” I was surprised! I told him that it was me playing and he said, “Oh, sure!” All right; OK, I was pretty naïve. I really believed that he didn't realize that it was a tape of me playing the piano. Looking back, I’m pretty sure he did know; but it was still a nice compliment.

Well, I have one more really good piano story to tell, but this is already a really long blog so you'll just have to wait in breathless anticipation until I tell it to you. I'm sure you are on the edge of your seats, but you will just have to wait!