MY OLD GERMAN PIANO

MY OLD GERMAN PIANO

(© Patrícia Evans)

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As far as I can I can remember, I always wanted to play the piano. Even more than singing and acting, my childhood dream was to be able to play the piano. Not that I wanted to make a living as a piano player. What made me want to play the piano was the pleasure I had listening to the sounds of it, a personal pleasure that was almost a true need.
When I was about nine years old I began a real campaign to get a piano from my parents. I employed all the resources I could, from spreading notes around the house and on their personal belongings and clothes, to crying, having temper tantruns and doing psychological blackmail. But everything was to no avail -- all my arguments were ignored, and to my surprise what I got for my birthday was a guitar. According to my parents a guitar was easier to get rid of, when I’d put aside this childish passing fad of mine. A piano would be too expensive and too cumbersome just to satisfy a mere spoiled little girl’s whim. But as I unpacked the guitar, which was small enough to fit my small hands, instead of feeling devastated, I fell in love with it. I’d finally be able to learn music, and so be prepared for the time when I’d get my piano.
For several years during my childhood I learned how to play the guitar, and played it until I was a teenager. I’m not bragging when I say I played it divinely well.
My teacher was a very shy individual, and even after years of teaching me, he’d come into the house with his head down, speaking very little, and very seldon accepting the cookies and juice my mother offered him. His name was Sergio, and he was an average person neither handsome nor ugly, neither fat nor thin, bald, and I have no idea if he was tall or if I saw him as being tall because I was only a child.
Sergio loved to teach, and had a deep affection towards his guitar, which was somehow contagious and impossible to be forgotten, like the time when he was so happy because I announced I wanted to learn classical guitar!
I even think I’ve chosen to play classical guitar because it was a greater challenge than those easy cyphers without appeal, and sometime after that I felt a private teacher was not enough to satisfy my musical curiosity.
When I was 13 my parents realized the childish fad hadn’t passed, and they enrolled me in my first musical school, which was one of the best schools in Rio de Janeiro: Villa Lobos Institute. I loved it, I simply loved it . . . not only because I was learning something I really liked, but because this gave me the kind of independence I’ve never had. I could take the subway all by myself, after my father took me to the station, and this was a real challenge, because most of the time my parents didn’t allow me to be alone. I’d get off at Carioca Station, cross the park, and walk towards the school, which was very near, almost in front of the well-known musical store “The Golden Guitar." I’d always run to this store after my class was finished, to watch the end of the piano lessons they had right there on the middle of the store. I stared at its window, and pried into every nook and corner looking for newly arrived music sheets.
AfterI graduated from Musical Theory, and had learned all I thought was enough about playing the guitar, I made music my chosen profession. As a matter of fact, I’d had this idea since I was thirteen, and was already playing in some night spots, always chaperoned by my parents, who proudly sat in the audience. In fact, my father not only took me there, but he also helped setting the stage, checking on the light and sound system, participating on the scripts, and taking care of my agenda, and also of everything else a father-hero would.
At sixteen I went through the tests to enter the Order of Brazilian Musicians and was approved. This made me a professional singer, something I’d been learning since before I entered the music Institute. My singing teacher was an ex-Diva named Déa Scobar who wanted to make me an opera prodigy, due to my exquisite contralto voice. I never told her that what I really wanted was to play the piano.
In that same year, I diversified my artistic studies, I think due to this Aries -Gemini thing which never allowed me get to get settled into any exclusive interest.
Involved in College, where I was studying Architecture, I divided my time between several projects, rehersals for shows, and the production of my first record by the Continental Recording Company, who later on closed its doors to my work, because I got furious and yelled at the director when he began sexually harassing me. By this time, I had also decided to buy my piano come what may, so I had the brilliant idea of looking for a job, in order to make my dream come true.
I attended classes in Santa Ursula College for two reasons: first, because I was too young when I began college at fifteen, and my parents thought a girl of fifteen would be safer studying near home; second, because Santa Ursula was a very good Architecture School. But it was also a very expensive college, and I didn’t feel right pestering my parents again about the piano idea and another course to attend. That’s why I entered the public college a year later, which was very far from home, but was even better than Santa Ursula, the best you could get, but at the same time was also the most sought after and the most difficult to get in, since it was free, so I couldn’t get transferred. It would take me years to get this, I'd have to do the exams for I wanted all with urgency, as usual . . .
I chose the Niterói’s public College (Fluminese Federeal University) , because the campus had a grove that went all the way to the shore, with a kind of bucolic air that the other one lacked, especially with its huge rumbling house from the 19th century.
I had a whole year of school behind me, which put me in advantage with the other students, specially in some specific tests, and just as I expected, I got in. Now it was easier to discuss with my parents about piano lessons, since I’d gotten rid of at least this one "financial dependence".
I wrote my resumé, and went to the Antonio Adolfo School of Music. I was very clear: “I want to have popular music singing classes, and become a teacher here." I remember my graduation, when I gave Antonio Adolfo a singing course program I’d elaborated, and he let me have a classroom, a schedule and the job. The course was successful, and I went to another music school called Cenario, which belonged to Tomas Improta, and offered myself to teach there. I now had classes in two different music schools, went to college, participated in shows, and everything fitted into a nice schedule, and I remember getting up at five in the morning, taking a bus to the ferry boat, crossing the bay, taking another bus to go to campus -- my classes began at seven in the morning -- without ever getting tired, ever getting bored, ever thinking anything was a problem, even when sometimes I made the same route twice or more, because I had to go back to Rio to teach.
After a year had gone by, I was able to buy my piano. It was an old German closet piano with metal base and three pedals. I had to search the entire city to find it, because I wanted more than a piano, and even now I don’t know why, but I wanted an old piano, an antique, with carved wood and ivory keys, and mine even had a brass crest in it, because its owner had won third place in a quality contest on 19th century. The piano was in perfect condition, and had an unique sound, like something from the past. I paid a small fortune for it, because apart from being a very good instrument, I bought it in an antique store.
I can’t even begin to describe my happiness in changing my entire room to fit the piano, but it was a sweet feeling, as all happy feelings are in tender moments.
My passion made it easy to learn quickly. On my first week I missed all of my classes, and re-scheduled all of my student’s lessons, so because I couldn’t get off my piano seat, nor get my fingers off its ivory keyboard. Nobody in my house or in the entire neighborhood could have possibly ignored the repetitive sounds of a beginner coming from my German piano, but they didn’t complain, at least not at home, but even kept asking for more, encouraging me, “Wow, you’re getting so much better!”, and since nobody in the neighborhood complained either, I kept on playing.
With the piano at home I could give private singing lessons, and since I had my own unique method, my course made the news, and my home was so full of students, I had to stop giving classes at the music schools.
I interviewed a young man called Paulo once. He wanted classes, and after the phonoterapist’s approval, and all the other necessary tests, we began our lessons. He not only was a singer and a poet, but also a writer and an artist, and worked in a bank, Banco do Brasil to afford his art. All of those coincidences brought us together, and we became more than teacher and student, we became friends. Like myself, Paulo dreamed about learning to play the piano, but it was very much later that we came to know he was an HIV positive. At that time there was very little to be done about it but pray for a little longer life and a less painful death. When he received the test results, he called me, and neither one of us knew what to think or do. A few months later he left his job, and stopped coming to classes, because he couldn’t leave home anymore.
He came to visit me once, to sing a duet, something we both loved to do, but he wasn’t able to, since he couldn’t force his diaphragm. Before he left, I asked him to go to the street corner to call a guy who used to park his van there with a sign announcing, “we haul anything to anywhere." I asked the guy to load my German piano in his van and sent it to Paulo’s home.
The last news I had of Paulo came several years ago, stating that he spent hours playing the ivory keys, which had gotten out of tune in the move, but this never bothered him, since he still thought the sound was beautiful.
I never heard anything else about Paulo or my German piano, and even though I was never able to buy another piano, since life goes round and round, and it’s in constant change, I always felt good thinking about my student’s happiness on his last days, playing the out-of-tune keys. I feel so good that I don’t mind postponing my own dream of again sitting at the piano, re-learning the songs I’ve never played again, not even in my guitar, since I put the guitar aside when I changed my entire room to fit my German piano.

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