The Page Turner

I wasn't even playing; I was just turning pages for Bob, the extraordinary pianist of the Trio Cabrillo. It was a long program, an hour and three-quarters, not counting intermission. Lots of it went so fast it was all I could do to keep up. I was so pumped up, it took hours to get to sleep that night.

You learn a lot about a pianist when you turn pages. Most of this I already knew about Bob, having turned for him several times, but I want to note these traits of his for the benefit of pianists who welcome performance tips.

1. He cares more about the work he is playing than about himself, the person playing it.

2. He is even-tempered, which makes people like working with him.

3. He has done his homework. He knows the music.

4. If he makes a mistake, he doesn't let it throw him.

5. He is not afraid of making a mistake. He doesn't make excuses.

6. He is willing to take risks.

7. When he plays, you feel that he wants every note; every phrase is beautiful.

8. He doesn't complain about the piano, even when to the observer the piano seems less than grateful.

9. He doesn't complain about the page turner, even when she doesn't notice the repeat sign.

(Photo is Bob playing the Saint-Saëns piano concerto with the Coastside Community Orchestra)

Playing Poorly

Well, sometimes we just don't play as well as we'd like to.

That was the case when I massacred Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel Waltz at the Coastside Chorale's concert last June. I knew it was bad, but didn't know how bad until I tried to listen to the CD a few days ago.

The accompaniments to the rest of the program are probably all right, but it was the solo performance which was, frankly, awful.

My teacher always had the same answer for times like this: "Take your lumps".

Nonda reassured me: "I have lots of CDs like that. Just put it in a drawer somewhere and don't listen to it."

Aargh.

Piano Dreams

My usual piano dreams run something like this: I am supposed to play for a wedding, but I can't find the church, am late, arrive without my music books, desperately try to think what I can play without sheet music.

I have ruined instrument dreams. Usually it is a school, where someone has left beautiful pianos, harpsichords and clavichords out in the rain. Sometimes it is a church (Episcopal, strangely, though I have only rarely played for Episcopal churches) meeting in a basement with a ruined organ.

Last night's dream was different. I was back at Skyline College, late to class, didn't have my books, couldn't find the room...and when I found it, there were a dozen people sitting on the floor, waiting to be taught, but no pianos.

So at the dream-Skyline, I had all the students sign a paper, lacking a proper roll sheet, and began the lecture. "We are going to talk about seeing today. We are going to talk about description. No matter what you choose to communicate, whether by written word, spoken word or music, the clarity of your vision is essential."

Casting about for something to use as a model, I picked up an instrument from a pile of discards in the corner of the room. A banjo. As the dream ended (and my real-life cat decided it was time to rise and shine) there was one lone plunk from the banjo strings: A lecture coda.

Clef Signs and Piano Duets

To the non-musician, the treble clef sign is just an icon representing music; the bass clef sign is a mystery, and the other clef signs are nothing but hieroglyphics. To the musician, however, the clef signs are fixed stars. They show the unchanging location on the lines or spaces of a particular music note, and just as you can find your way by knowing East, all the other notes may be found from the one.

The treble clef sign shows the G above middle C and the bass clef sign shows, between its dots, the fixed location of the F below middle C. The less familiar clef signs fix the location of middle C and are used by cellists, violists, trombone players and others who spend lots of time in that desert between the top line of the bass clef and the bottom line of the treble. Tenors in choirs use a treble clef which sometimes has a little figure eight at the bottom, since their notes are sung or played an octave lower than written.

“Treble” means high and “Bass” means low. Most pianists are used to having the right hand on the higher notes and the left on the bottom. We never take the clef signs for granted, however, since both hands could play in either treble or bass.

In the wonderful world of piano duets, it is common practice for primo or prima (the high part) to play using two treble clefs, with secondo or seconda playing two bass clefs, both hands on the bottom part of the piano.

In the old days, before phonographs and radio, piano duets were often the only way people could hear the latest orchestral or chamber music works when they lived far away from cities which had orchestras (almost everybody had a piano and many people could play a little.) Four hands would split the parts of the instruments between them. Even Brahms, during whose lifetime recording was invented, provided four-hands versions of some of his works.

In the 19^th Century days, a courting couple might be left unchaperoned if the lady’s female companion could hear the piano from her post outside the salon door. A few three-hand piano pieces date from this time.

Scrambling the clef signs produces a different kind of recreation for the player with no discernible difference in the sound. Chopin, Schumann and others would sometimes write a bass clef note higher than the treble note played at the same time. The effect is that the player’s thumbs cross, a kind of “Hello” from the composer, since the listener can’t tell from the sound that this is happening.

Mozart at least once wrote duets so that one player was still holding a key down when the other player landed on it. Mozart’s duets were probably played with his sister Nannerl, so he managed in this way to give her finger a good poke.

Other composers including Schubert and Brahms arrange the clefs so that the duet player’s arms cross. Great examples of this are the last part of Schubert’s piano duet piece called “Our Friendship Never Changes” (“Notre amitie est invariable”) and the fourth Brahms Hungarian Dance which John and I are playing in the video.

Duet references: Cameron McGraw, Piano Duet Repertoire, Indiana University Press. Ernest Lubin, The Piano Duet, Grossman.

Tears and Moonlight

When I first encountered Beethoven’s Sonata Op. 27, No. 2, quasi una Fantasia—famously known as the “Moonlight”—I was heartened by the fact that I could play the first few bars and that they sounded like something. Never mind that the beginning of the Adagio sostenuto is just a single repeated broken chord; I was a teenager and sincerely wanted to express drama, misery, mystery. Not to mention seeming to be a better piano player than I really was.

Mrs. Pack, my teacher, coolly informed me that the sonata had three movements and that I might want to get acquainted with the other two. Undaunted, I practiced the Adagio—the easy movement--for hours (or at least half-hours) on end and achieved my goal when I played it for my friend Audrey and she cried.

Since that time, I have probably taught the slow movement of the “Moonlight” several hundred times, the middle movement two or three times, and the third movement not even once. “Try to remember that it is their first encounter with this music,” Mr. Sheldon reminded me when I complained about always having to teach Beethoven’s “Für Elise”, Mozart’s C Major, the “Moonlight” and Debussy’s Clair de Lune. “Remember how you felt when you first heard it.”

There is power in the Adagio of Beethoven’s Op. 27, No. 2. How else can I explain the lengths to which some students will go to try to play it? One student, barely in Level Two, taught himself the first page using diagrams of the keyboard with the hands drawn in.

Terry, whom I encountered at the grocery store yesterday, lettered every single note of the Adagio and triumphantly played the last chord after three months of diligent practice. He refused, however, to play it in the annual student recital. The piece was already on the printed program, so I announced that I would play it in Terry’s place.

As I played, I noticed stirring and tittering from the audience at the Bach Dancing and Dynamite Society, the seaside concert hall where we used to hold our recitals. I was well into the Adagio when I saw the reason.

Terry’s wife, Cynthia, had cut out a cardboard moon and, using a rod and reel, was lowering the moon on a line from the balcony until it swung right over the big Steinway.

Grace Under Pressure

Quinn needed to make an audition tape for music camp, but we ran into technical problems. After trying three different ways to videotape his Handel, we finally succeeded in getting a recording on his cell phone. Mimi the cat, however, wanted to get in on the act.

In the video, you can see her pacing back and forth. Then you can hear me slap the piano book back on the rack after she knocked it askew by rubbing her face on it. Finally, she decided to help me play the piano.

There was no help for it; the deadline was on him and Quinn (who never stopped playing during all these shenanigans) submitted the cat-assisted tape. Not only was he accepted by the camp, but he won one of the Coastside Community Orchestra's music scholarships and will be playing with the first violins in this Saturday's concert.

High Drama in the Pit

The things you worry about in performing are the things you can’t practice or predict. Pianists often do not know the quirks of the instrument on which they will be playing; when accompanying, one never knows what the other performer might do or not do. When playing outdoors, keyboard players know to assure their power source, take lots of clothespins, minimize the page turns. All these reminders have been learned the hard way.

The wedding for which I most wanted to play beautifully, my niece and namesake Mikie’s marriage to Mark Newton, took place last week in an apple orchard in Napa, in gale-force winds.

Charles and I had prepared our favorite cello and piano pieces, had packed the instruments, stands, books. A few days before the wedding, the father of the bride, my musician brother Les, said that his friend the trumpet player would be able to make it after all, and would I mind playing the Clarke with him for the processional. Unfortunately, there would be no opportunity to practice, so we would just have to talk it through beforehand.

Which we did, scant minutes before we had to play. “It’s the ‘Trumpet Voluntary’, right?” “You’re playing it in D?” “Do you take the trills from the upper auxiliary or the principal?” “Which repeats do you want to do?” “And, by the way, why don’t we do the Jeremiah Clarke ‘Trumpet Tune’ for the first part of the recessional?” “How does it go again? Oh, yeah. Got it.”

So out in the apple orchard, everything set up and clips in place, my aunt’s old faux fur covering my pretty wedding dress, the music stand blew over and cut my hand, which began to bleed. The cello music was scattered everywhere. I adjusted the keyboard so that the wind would be blowing from the side instead of the back. I asked my son Ed to hold the books down; Charles changed music stands to one which had less wind resistance and held his scores with his bow until he could get the clips on. When he picked up the cello again, it had gone completely out of tune in the cold.

Miraculously, the sun came out as soon as we began to play.

Between Larry, the trumpet player, and Ed, both reading music upside-down and sideways, the books more or less stayed in place for the seating music, lovely Barber and Bach.

All went well except that we had to play the Brahms “My Thoughts Like Haunting Music” instead of the Bach Air on the G String for the first part of the processional, since that’s what we had clipped down to the stands and there was no way to change all the clothespins in time. Brahms is never easy, especially under pressure, and I was paying really fierce attention to the page.

The little flower girls walked very slowly, adorably, scattering petals and investigating the bottoms of their flower baskets. The Brahms finished before they reached their destination, and I did a quick take on what key to modulate to before the Trumpet Voluntary. OK, C to A; no problem. Thank God for harmony classes. Later, I asked my brother Les if he liked the special piece I composed for part of the processional, “Noodling in A Major.”

Larry picked up his trumpet for the second part of the processional as someone signaled that the bride was ready to come down the aisle. “I’m freezing,” he said, putting his lips to the cold brass instrument. I can only guess at what accommodation a brass player must make for an instrument which has grown as cold as that trumpet must have been.

The wedding was brief and beautiful. Larry played the recessional and then Charles and I played Elgar’s “Chanson de Matin”. By the time we finished, all the guests and the wedding party had bundled up and were walking toward the Carneros Inn, where the dinner and reception were to be held.

Everyone said the wedding music was beautiful and nobody had the least idea that we had been fighting for every note.