Tag: piano
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Piano lessons
James StemmleWest Virginia, United States The piano teacher was angry, irritable, incontinent, and in pain. Dying of cancer, she eventually went home with hospice care. The hospice lady asked, “What would a good day look like?” They rigged things in her home to live at least one good day: a bed on the first floor…
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Nikolai Medtner: his forgotten melodies, music, and life
Michael YafiHouston, Texas, United States The music of Nikolai Medtner (1880 -1951) is among the most enigmatic of the piano repertoire. Medtner was an opinionated composer who admired Rachmaninoff and rejected all attempts at modernism in music. Rachmaninoff met Medtner in Russia and the two composers had a mutual admiration for one another. Rachmaninoff told…
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Charles Valentin Alkan
Charles-Henri Valentin Morhange was a precocious child who played the piano at the age of five and gave his first public performance at seven. He was the second of six children of an old Ashkenazi family that for centuries had lived near the town of Metz in Alsace. Born in Paris in 1813, he later…
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Felix Mendelssohn, musical prodigy
Felix Mendelssohn made his musical debut at age nine. Born in Hamburg in 1809, he came from a distinguished German family that moved to Berlin in 1902. His grandfather and father had been successful businessmen who also made it a point to provide their children with an excellent education in the liberal arts. His grandfather…
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Franz Liszt, best piano player in Europe
Like Mozart and Mendelssohn, Franz Liszt was a musical prodigy. He played the piano when he was five years old. At eight, he could read difficult music, and two years later he was composing music himself. By age twelve he was ranked one of the best piano players in Europe.1 He was born in 1811…
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An unseen border
T.Y. EulianoGainesville, Florida, United States “Please let me have the chest pain in 3,” I said. “I can’t take any more whiny kids today.” Clare raised an eyebrow. “You can have the next trauma.” “Two traumas,” she said. “I can’t stand any more whiny parents.” “Deal.” She wrote my initials by Room 3. “Remind me…
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Medicine, musically
Willem BloisHalifax, Nova Scotia I sat on the piano bench, head down, staring at the space between middle C and the key above it. I could see my teacher out of the corner of my eye, sitting forward in her chair, no longer relaxed nor casually listening to the first movement of a Haydn piano…
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Sergei Rachmaninov, the pianist with very big hands
Sergei Rachmaninov, the famous Russian composer, pianist, and composer, was born in 1873 into a family that descended from the Moldavian prince Stephen the Great. At age four he began piano lessons and already displayed remarkable talent. He was sent to study music at the St. Petersburg Conservatory when ten years old, and, upon being…