Piano lessons

I was 13, and had been having piano lessons for maybe five or six years. I could have been taught by any of half a dozen piano teachers at my new school, and it was sheer luck of the draw that I ended up assigned to a teacher called Nick. I had no idea who he was, and it was with no particular expectation that I traipsed over to the music building one wet September afternoon to knock on the door of teaching room number 12 and to introduce myself for my first lesson. It was to be a five-year relationship that would, in a very positive way, shape who I am now and who I aspire to be.

Back in that first lesson, I remember being keen to impress. We spoke for a couple of minutes, and I told him with no small pride that I’d just passed grade 5. Almost unprompted, I launched into a piece I’d learned for that exam – a dreamy, jazzy arrangement of I got plenty of nuttin’ from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. As I played, he sat to my right, watching my hands and my technique from the periphery of my vision. He seemed to be making assessments, but didn’t comment on how I played. Instead, over the following term, he got me hooked on the 48 Preludes and Fugues from J.S. Bach’s Well-tempered Clavier. Later in the year I performed the Prelude in C minor from the first book. It was a revelation. This really was graduating to Big School.

Until my lessons with Nick, there had been two worlds of music. On one hand, there was the world that exists in special books for amateurs and learners: the world of grade exams and simplified compilations of film and TV music, Disney tunes, or ‘easy classics’, where nothing would ever get too difficult, technically or emotionally, for the casual learner. Then, beyond some invisible barrier, there lay the world of ‘real’ music. Music for professionals. Music that meant something. Grown-up music. The Bach violin concerto in A minor, with its restless and insistent third movement. The ominous, rhythmic, cataclysmic opening of the Brahms Double Concerto or the jubilant bombast of Holst’s Jupiter.

Under Nick, this divide between the ‘playable’ and the ‘listenable’ evaporated. I understood that with good technique and the will to learn, about 90% of the repertoire is within reach of a competent pianist. And we’re talking real repertoire here, not that watered-down, dehumanised namby-pamby rubbish.

However, playing an instrument is only partly about getting the notes right. Mostly, it’s about making music. If that sounds like strange statement, consider this: if music is a language, then a performance is like a poetry recital. Getting the words in the right order is one thing, but the particular emphasis, rhythm, intonation and articulation chosen by the reader can bring out different colours in the text to a greater or lesser degree, and turn it into something beautiful and unique. It’s all very well being able to play something mechanically, but unless you know what emotional content you want to convey, you might as well go home. Performance is important because it’s a way to push oneself to speak through the music. (And in my case, a looming performance date was also a great way of getting me to practice.)

It’s important to note, however, that simply being expressive was not a virtue in itself. In between ‘cheesy and over-indulgent’ on the one hand, and, on the other, ‘prim and mechanical’, there lies a sweet spot. Expressive and heartfelt, but classy and poised. Above all, honest. Humble. Human.

Wagner’s Parsifal: revelatory

In my third year at the school, Nick revived the CD library that had existed when he’d been a student there, starting it off with discs from his own collection. The death of the old library, he reasoned, had been due to its placement in a locked store room. He would therefore host the collection in his (now permanent) teaching room. He persuaded the school to give him a budget for new discs, and by the end of my fifth year the collection occupied dozens of metres of shelf space. He could always be relied upon for suggestions that would both educate and entertain. Needless to say, I dove into the collection, maxing out my borrowing limit every week whenever I went for a lesson. I would listen to Wagner operas while doing my maths homework on hot summer evenings. I would get distracted from physics revision by Bach, Ligeti, or Brahms. There was even a good jazz selection, which I also plundered – Charles Mingus, Django Reinhardt, Tomasz Stanko and more. There was some music that I disliked, or didn’t understand at the time, but each record I heard added to my awareness of the breadth and context of music around the world.

Cultural nourishment and enlightenment aside, there were several other ways that Nick’s unique style made an impact. His attitude to life was one of cheeky irreverence – rebelliousness, even – which was refreshing in such a fusty school. He cared about people, and excellence, and not for meaningless formality. He was funny, and would never censor himself, and he was one of the few teachers I had who spoke to me just as he would to an adult. When, in a lesson, I played for him a slow movement of a Beethoven sonata, powering through a particularly delicate and moving passage with too much brusqueness, he stopped me. He looked at me. He said: “Don’t be in too much of a rush to get to the end. The tension there has been building for that whole section, and the resolution is beautiful. I hope you realise, for the sake of your future spouse, there are some kinds of climax that can be improved by slowing down a little. Let your audience enjoy it.”

The sense of familiarity rebounded on me at one point when I mistook it for laxness. When working on the coursework for A-level music, I was required to compose and record a piece. Mine was a solo piano pastiche entitled ‘allegretto melancholico’, and I had spent so long writing it that I hadn’t put enough time into practicing it. The submission deadline loomed. Nick came and found me practicing, on the point of giving up. When I came up with excuses, and suggested that I should go away and record the thing in my own time, or let him play it for me, he was having none of it. I had to do this, he said, and to turn around and not to do so at this point would be lazy, entitled and frankly ungrateful. After I got over the shock of the verbal slap, I realised he was absolutely right. I pulled the proverbial finger out. I put in three or four hours’ focused practice and nailed the recording the following day.

There were other lessons too. Only do what you’re passionate about. By all means try things that don’t appeal immediately – after all, some of life’s greatest pleasures come only after some investment of time and energy – but make a call and leave it behind if you have to. (“It’s been a month and you’re still sight-reading. This piece isn’t working for you – I think you should find a new one to learn.”). Conversely: if whatever you’re working on is important enough to you, you will put the hours in and it will seem worthwhile. As long as you can stay aware of yourself and your aspirations, in your heart of hearts, you will know what you want to do.

Surprisingly few of the lessons I feel I learned from Nick come from things he would remember telling me. I suppose this goes to show the power of a teacher’s character: he became, without realising it, something of a silent mentor, teaching by example, with off-hand comments being used to derive insights about life and leadership. And why not? He’s a respectable, respectful and witty guy with a wonderful family and a wonderful job teaching precocious and intellectually challenging teenagers. He’s basically won at life. I’m sure there are others who hold him in equally high regard – though perhaps some of them have kept up with him better since leaving school, and so haven’t quite mythologised him as much as I.