Twanging the Strings of Memory

Last night I was an accompanist. DaughterOfVirge had to perform for a school assessment. It was a small soirée in a back room of the school hall. The audience comprised fellow music students, several parents, a senior music teacher and a video camera. DaughterOfVirge will have the dubious pleasure of analysing our performance on video.

She was one of 5 students to present a repertoire last night. It was one of the other students who twanged the strings of my memory by playing a toccata by Khachaturian. All of a sudden, images from a quarter of a century ago started popping into my head. I don't think I'd heard that toccata at all in the intervening years.

I was back in the lounge room of my music teacher. (I remember she had two enormous rough-haired Chow Chows, one of which would always howl whenever my sister played Greig. We could never work out if the dog was complaining or singing along.) It was during a music lesson. I was performing with gusto. I think the section I was up to was marked fortississississimo, or some such excess, when 'bang'.

Those familiar with pianos would realise that a grand piano is not meant to go 'bang'.

TeacherOfVirge was none too happy. She was probably not expecting to include broken string replacement in her budget. I shrugged it off. It meant little to me at the time.

I was sitting in a performance assessment again, wondering what I'd be doing now had I decided to pursue a career in music performance instead of engineering. I'd probably be numbing my brain as a private piano teacher to keep some sort of regular income stream while trying to make performance pay.

No regrets.

Comments

Isn't it odd, the things that'll spark a memory?

I get all nostalgic whenever I hear a good piano story, me. I don't remember much of anything from a quarter of a century ago, but ten years, fifteen--man, time flies.