Yahoo News Trapped at home? It’s never too late to polish up your piano playing
I am what is known as a “late returner”. As a teenage clarinettist, I hoped to go to music college and, later, join one of the London orchestras. I was told that, to do so, I would need to learn a second instrument. For years, I reluctantly practised the piano. It was much more difficult than the clarinet, not ideal for someone keen on instant gratification. Frankly, I struggled.
Thanks to a serendipitous fork in the road, I ended up becoming an economist instead. Mounting travel commitments meant the clarinet ended up in a cupboard collecting dust. And the piano was only useful for entertaining the kids with the occasional rendition of the Bare Necessities or another Disney song.
As the kids got older, however, I had a musical epiphany, an experience I know has been shared by so many other “late returners”. I decided to take the piano rather more seriously, working my way up to Grade 8 and then to a diploma.
Today, I am enormously grateful for having done so, even though my most recent piano-playing ambitions have been thwarted by Covid-19. Last Saturday, I was supposed to take part in an amateur “pianothon” organised by Fiona Page, the inspiration behind summer piano courses in La Balie, a house in France where amateur classical pianists are put through their paces by remarkably forgiving professionals: last year, I was lucky enough to be taught by Charles Owen, a Steinway UK Ambassador. Next Saturday, I was due to be accompanying singer Babs Savage in a James Bond medley — Diamonds Are Forever, Nobody Does It Better, etc — in the basement of a Pizza Express. Thanks to Covid-19 there is no more Bond (the new release is delayed until November) or Pizza Express.
I am now working from home but, when not chained to my computer or speaking to colleagues and clients on Zoom, I hone my pianistic skills. I had already spent many months trying to master Schubert’s B flat Sonata, ironically his last before succumbing to syphilis, a 19th century precursor of Covid-19. Now I have the chance to apply the final polish. And I’ve been foolishly looking at a bit of Albéniz, a Spanish composer whose writing for the piano is fiendishly difficult. Meanwhile, to stop the rest of the family pulling their hair out, I’ve also got a few movie themes lined up. I’m not a one-trick Bond pony.
I may even be in the process of creating a weird 21st century equivalent of an Edwardian parlour room. On Saturday, my middle daughter asked me to record the first movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata which she sent as a get well soon gift to a friend suffering from Covid-19. Apparently — or maybe remarkably — it cheered her up.
My eldest daughter has picked up the clarinet for the first time in ages and, at the weekend, we played some clarinet and piano duets. We’re both a bit rusty, but there’s every chance we’ll get a lot better if we persevere. My youngest daughter, meanwhile, has been glancing at her flute. Daughters one and three have also ordered some clarinet and flute duets to entertain themselves.
There’s more to life, it seems, than Netflix...
Stephen King (@kingeconomist) is HSBC’s Senior Economic Adviser and a totally amateur pianist
