A Tale of Four Steinways

When you are a pianist, you are a slave to the instruments of the world.  Whereas a violinist or cellist preens his treasured instrument, learning to exploit the characteristics of its sound and carrying it lovingly from performance to performance (Yo-Yo Ma buys an airplane seat next to him for his cello), a pianist rarely gets to perform on her own instrument.  Thus, there is always a likelihood that the mastery you achieve in practice will be diluted in performance.   I have performed on pianos that are too high (usually because they are on wheels), keys that are too sharp at the edges, one in a television studio with a distracting mirror placed inside the keyboard cover, rickety benches, uprights and electronic keyboards provided in lieu of promised grands, and of course, pianos that have not been tuned in decades.

I have heard my share of mitigating statements.  We can’t tell the difference.  You always sound beautiful.  Just make the best of it.  In truth, I am always happy for an audience, but I am not pleased to offer a performance that does not live up to my standards.  Like it or not, a musician is always judged by her last performance.  Unlike those who create enduring canvas art, an instrumentalist must keep recreating musical art again and again.  Living in that moment is part of the sensuous joy of being a musical artist; it is also part of the burden.  A pianist is an itinerant music maker forever in search of unity between instrument and performance.

For me, the key to beating the odds is a Steinway piano.  Steinways are one of the most enduring American-made treasures, having been produced by hand on American soil for close to two hundred years.  They are still manufactured today using the same molds and methods used one hundred years ago.  Because of the care taken in selecting the materials, especially for the sound board, Steinways have a uniquely deep “rumble” to their sound.  They are also harder to play than other pianos.  Someone who practices habitually on a Steinway develops “Steinway muscles,” making it easier to transition to instruments by other makers.

My parents never gave me a car, but when I turned sixteen I got my first Steinway.  Like precious works of art, Steinways have provenance, thus providing an added element of history and karma to the instrument.  My Steinway was a 1923 vintage.  It had been in the possession of a South Beach socialite—a woman who had lively soirées with glamorous guests—since its inception.  Among those who played on this instrument was the great José Iturbi.  Under the spell of this wonderful instrument, I grew as an artist.  I brought to life the Rachmaninoff Concerto No. 2, the Beethoven “Emperor” Concerto, and the Liszt Spanish Rhapsody. 

Of course the piano wasn’t really mine, it belonged to my parents.  During college I became a piano vagabond, having to satisfy myself with practice room uprights.  Only during a performance could I have access to an actual grand piano on campus.  In graduate school, one of my classmates was a cellist.  We teamed up one day to rock some Brahms.  Our Management professor, who happens to be married to Bob Vila, discovered what we were up to; she threw a party for our class, giving me the opportunity to perform on their lovely piano in a home that was every bit as gorgeous as you would expect it to be. 

It was many years until my fingers touched another Steinway, or even another piano.  While living in Atlanta, my husband caught an ad in the Sunday paper for a Steinway Model A offered at just two thousand dollars.  After talking to the seller and determining the 1921 vintage of the piano (all Steinways have traceable serial numbers) we hopped in the car to meet him at a highway rest stop in Tennessee.  A shady character in a pickup told us to “jump in,” taking us without another word into the back woods.  My husband and I squeezed each other’s hands realizing the stupidity of what we had just done.  We arrived at a domicile that seemed like part of the original set of Deliverance.  Inside, in a place filled with grunge and stench, this Hillbilly with a “summer smile” (summer there and summer gone) lifted a blanket and produced a walnut Steinway grand.  In truth, it was not in the best condition.  It had belonged to Waylon Jennings and had been taken on tour.  There was a skid board bolted to the side, used for sliding the case along the stage.  The felts had been treated with alcohol to dry and harden them, producing a sharper, more brittle sound—thus making the piano audible over the electric guitars.  But there was no mistaking the feel of a Steinway.  My Steinway muscles, long neglected, sprang to life.  There, in the middle of God-knows-where, I made music again.

We brought this ugly duckling home and tried to spruce it up.  It was not a beauty, but it was all we could afford in those days.  And while the sound could have been more resonant, it was far from the worst piano I had ever played.  More to the point, it had the Steinway feel I was accustomed to.  It would do for now.

I made friends with Barbara, then owner of the Atlanta Steinway dealership.   She had the sense to know that someone who was committed to Steinway ownership would one day buy a piano from her.  She invited me to a private session on Vladimir Horowitz’ Steinway when it toured the country after his death.   She also introduced me to Andy, the technician who handled all the pianos in her shop.  He negotiated a three-way trade with Barbara and me:  I bought a single-owner 60s era Steinway from Andy while she bought the Jennings Steinway from me.  Andy, was then commissioned to rebuild and restore the Jennings instrument for Barbara’s shop.

Though this was a step up in quality, the 60s Model M was not without its issues.  One of the few technological enhancements made to Steinway production in the 20^th Century was the introduction of Teflon bushings in the action mechanism, to reduce friction.  Because Teflon is a non-porous substance and wood is not, there were unintended consequences; eventually the keys would begn to click. By 1982, Steinway abandoned the Teflon bushings in response to pianist complaints.  My piano was from this dark era in Steinway’s history, although it had been well maintained by the first owner and did not click. I did my best to regulate its environment, but it was, at best, a ticking time bomb.

By the year 2000, my Steinway and I were living back in Boston.  One of my classmates from college had told me about the new Van Cliburn International Piano Competition for Outstanding Amateurs.  For over a year I had been preparing to enter the competition during its next cycle, in 2001.  I chose an ambitious program that included a mixture of pieces from my youth as well as some new ones that I could not wait to perform.  I went from not playing regularly at all for nearly twenty years to practicing sometimes as much as five or six hours a day. 

There were a lot of emotions tied up in this sudden return to musicmaking.  I had young children who were each working hard at difficult sports.  My son was trying to be competitive at hockey having come to Boston at the age of nine (most boys start playing hockey when they are five).  My daughter was training daily as a competitive figure skater, committed to a work ethic that included many sacrifices.  For me, it was an opportunity to show my children that parents have game too.  Most children do not see their parents toil at work; rather, they see us sitting comfortably on the sidelines cheering them on, or chewing them out.   This piano competition allowed them to watch me in the trenches working to be good at something: sometimes successful, sometimes not. Once I committed to this endeavor publicly, I could not back down.   Moreover, the kids loved the music that suddenly filled our house.  Commonly at bedtime, they would yell downstairs from their beds, “Mommy, would you play us to sleep?” 

One day we received a postcard in the mail announcing a special Steinway sale.  Steinway was bringing several truckloads of instruments up from its Long Island factory, setting them up in the lobby of one of the downtown theatres.  It was an appointment-only event.  My husband suggested that I make an appointment so that I could play all the new pianos.  What fun!

The event was an embarrassment of riches.  I admit that I was blind to the several dozens—perhaps hundreds—of uprights and smaller grand pianos dotting the venue.  What caught my eye was an array of brand new, seven-foot-long Model Bs set keyboard to keyboard.  They took my breath away.  I sat down at the first one, adjusted the artist’s bench, and began to play the opening of the Chopin B-flat minor Scherzo.  After the first few pages I suddenly stopped, giggled like a little girl, then hopped to my left to continue the piece on the next piano.  This one didn’t possess the brightness I prefer in the middle register, so I jumped again to my left and resumed playing.  I continued like this, back and forth among five different pianos.  To the average onlooker, those pianos would have appeared completely identical, but to me—and any other pianist—those instruments were as distinct and individual as five separate strangers.  It took a good twenty-five minutes of exploring different styles across the different registers until I discerned a favorite.  I was so happy to be in peak form again, or I could never have enjoyed such an event to its fullest.

Now, husbands are rarely magnanimous enough to accrue enough points in the credit column to wipe out years of throwing socks on the floor and leaving up the toilet seat.  This was one such day.  I had been so blinded by the beauty before me that I lost track of what my husband and kids were up to.  I stopped playing briefly to consider what to play next, when I heard my husband say from behind me, “It looks good on you.  Is this the one you want?”  I turned around in disbelief.  “You are joking,” I said.  Soberly, he replied, “If you are going to play like this and train this hard, you ought to have the best instrument.”

The very next day, my fourth and last Steinway grand piano entered my life.  It bolstered my preparation for the upcoming competition, helping me to achieve sound qualities in Rachmaninoff Preludes that I could not have imagined before.  I found a brightness in my Scarlatti Sonatas that changed how I approached these Italian gems.  And I revealed a melancholy and brooding in Chopin that I had only dreamed of.  With this type of training, I was at last prepared to exploit the immense Steinway Model D that awaited me at the Ft. Worth competition. 

It had been over two decades since I had last performed publicly.  Taking the stage for the preliminary round, I dug in to the opening flourish of the Chopin Scherzo, at once realizing that I had achieved something I had been striving for my entire life.  For the first time, I found the connection between rehearsal and performance, allowing my public rendition to deliver the vision of months of preparation.  I was not facing a foreign instrument, making adjustments against a strange entity during a live performance; rather, it was a seamless transition from the practice bench to the public stage.  I closed my eyes, like I did every day in my living room, and played my heart out.

Tomorrow's blog:  Mother-In-Law Diplomacy