My First Piano. The Journey Begins

My first piano was a cardboard keyboard folded at the back of the Leila Fletcher Piano Course, Book One that I needed for the piano lessons I took at lunch hour at school. I was in Grade One at the time. We were meant to practice on these while each student got a turn with the teacher to play the actual piano at the front of the room.

The dining room table was the only table long enough for me to unfold the keyboard. I laid the music out, propped up against the typewriter and practiced. It might seem strange to be playing music on cardboard keys, not having the proprioceptive feedback of depressing the keys or hearing the sound, for that matter.

The typewriter was in constant use as my mother’s entire family lived in Germany. I remember the lightweight airmail paper and envelopes my mother typed her letters on. She would place a regular sheet of paper behind the air mail paper so the keys wouldn’t destroy it. The piano is just another keyboard, I thought. If you have any doubt about this, check out The Typewriter, by Leroy Anderson.

 The arrival in our home of the Heinzman Upright Grand piano was met with great excitement. A beautiful, glossy dark brown instrument, with smooth ivory keys and a quick action that made it easy to play. A matching bench for books of music. The piano had to be on an inside wall. Winnipeg winters are freezing. I used to place the soles of my bare feet up against my bedroom wall in the middle of the night to check the degree of cold. Has to be experienced to be believed!  Owning an upright grand was a point of pride. Just shy of owning a true grand piano, which would never fit in our dining room. But, equally as serious.

The piano had been played by an accompanist for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and cost my parents 220.00. Probably about the same it would fetch today, if that. There are a lot of free pianos to be had. This piano has landed on an inside wall in my sister’s home so I still get to play it every year at Christmas and it still sounds fantastic.

There were a few records in my parents’ collection featuring the piano. I remember Philippe Entremont plays Listz and of course, Van Cliburn playing the Tchaikovsky Piano concerto in B flat – his winning performance at the Tchaikovsky Piano competition in Moscow at the height of the Cold War. Apparently, this big win in Moscow came hot on the heels of Moscow’s big win with Sputnik. In chess as in piano, as in outer space, the Cold War was fought in any available arena. This album, with the twenty-three year old Van on the cover, became a household staple among record stacks. 

Apparently, the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto is the most requested piece when audiences are allowed to have a say. I had the opportunity a few years ago to play with an orchestra accompanying a pianist playing this work. For all is gorgeous lines and recognizable swells and arpeggios, it’s an unexpectedly complex and weirdly orchestrated work. The second most requested work is the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto, also performed at the same competition by Van Cliburn and also released by RCA records in the 1950’s. I doubt the popularity of these pieces a coincidence, given these two recordings were among the first classical records to sell millions of copies. Van Cliburn became a hero and a celebrity by playing classical music. Imagine that!

I did! I practiced the piano in the dining room while my mother cooked supper in the kitchen. There was only a swinging door between us, so she heard everything I was doing, as did I hear every crack of the spoon and hiss of the water boiling over onto the stovetop.

Whenever I slowed down at a tricky few bars, she would point out that I always stopped at the same spot. She was listening and my screeching to a halt every time the notes got messy, disrupted her enjoyment. She was used to hearing Entremont plays Listz, not Bettina plays Bach from the Grade Four Royal Conservatory Book. My mother had to quit piano lessons as a child. There was a war that came between her and her musical pursuits, although she admits that it did not come easily to her. She is a believer in music being a gift.  I think she delighted in the belief that I might have been bestowed this gift. How far it would go, nobody knew.

Greatness in the making, on the Heinzman Upright Grand.

There were a series of piano tuners who came to our house twice a year. One of them screwed plastic margarine tubs into the sides of the piano and filled them with water. This was meant to keep the humidity levels up (dry cold Winnipeg winters).

A subsequent tuner immediately unscrewed them, admonishing the fool who dared mar such a beautiful instrument. Instead, plastic containers were placed inside on the base of the piano. I don’t know if more sophisticated humidifiers existed, but it was my job every week to dust the piano, clean the keys and fill those containers without spilling any water into the piano. My mother liked the top of the piano for some of her plants and some white rings formed that to this day have not been erased. No plants on the piano!

For my first piano recital, on the stage of Queenston Elementary school, I proudly played a two-page piece with two hands. For anyone who remembers piano lessons, this is a great milestone. A piece that spans two pages and requires hands together playing. It was called The Train. I have no recollection of melody, but there was probably a crescendo and a decrescendo marking the passing of the train. I do remember my mother allowing me to wear jeans. There was a conversation that happened beyond my hearing where the teacher suggested to my mother that I continue on with piano lessons beyond what the group lessons could offer. Private lessons. It sounded very classy.

Across the street a family had moved in. The Funks. Alice Funk just happened to teach piano. And I happened to be on the road to piano greatness. So, it was set up. We were a great match, student and teacher.

 Alice Funk ushered me through the Western Board of Music exams and then the Toronto Conservatory. I studied with Alice up to my Grade 8 exam. A cold, rainy day, where my ride to the exam fell through at the last minute and I had to walk a block and a half to catch the bus downtown. I was freezing cold and barely made it in time. I presented myself soaking wet to the people in charge and they gave me a few minutes to try to get my hands warm.  My nerves jangled with the rush. They called out the scales to play, then the studies I had prepared, followed by my pieces. I had done this many times before. I don’t remember my mark, but it all turned out ok.

Same piano, years later...more books with fewer pictures.

For Christmas one year I received the piano music for Elton John’s Greatest Hits Volume One. I took it with me to my lesson and quickly realized that pop music was no piece of cake to learn. Complicated chords and accidentals and impossible key signatures meant to be easy to sing. But I did manage to learn some popular music. Bridge Over Troubled Water and I Don’t Like Mondays by the Boomtown Rats. I used to love crashing around on the piano with that one. Piano Man was also manageable. I took lessons long enough to be able to finally enjoy it. So many people quit their lessons at about the Grade Four level. It seems so out of reach, to be able to play Your Song or The Homecoming by Hagood Hardy (1975). Musicbox Dancer (1978) was heard all over the radio in the seventies and I got the sheet music to that one as well (super easy).

In my teens, I took up the guitar and played my way through the Cat Stevens songbook and some Simon and Garfunkel hits. 59^th Street Boogie. Slow down, you move too fast. Gotta make the morning last. I sang along to fill out the accompaniment but never felt very confident with my voice. I sang in the school choir but was asked to fake it whenever there were high notes. Our teacher, Mrs. Martin, used a pitch pipe to get us to find out notes. She was a tiny, bird-like woman with gray-blue hair. We learned Pussy willows, Cattails, Soft Winds and Roses for the Winnipeg Music Festival, where choirs compete for the coveted first place spot. There is one song every choir sings and then they sing a selection of their choosing. Mrs. Martin focused a lot on the emotion of the piece, coaching us to sing softly here and with a plaintive swell there. I couldn’t find all the high notes, but I sure could emote! People love the sound of children’s choirs. But after hearing ten choirs all sing the same song, I imagine the parents who took time off work to come and listen heard enough for a lifetime.

On Saturdays, I stayed after German School and sang in a German choir. The thing I most remember about German choir was that I had to bring a lunch. My mom got me a pickle lunch case. We all sat in the choir room after being bored to death in German School. Prisoners of our heritage, we ate our Schinkenwurst sandwiches to get us through two hours of German songs. If our choir director was in a good mood we would convince her to yodel for us. We found this utterly hilarious, but she did it anyway. Memories…

What I remember of German choir:

It was in Grade Five, three years into my private piano lessons, that a notice was sent home with all the students about free violin lessons. Students would be given a violin and lessons and be allowed out of class (no staying over lunch). I simply insisted. This was clearly too good to be true, with none of the usual caveats that it may not be. I’m not sure what it was that excited me so much about playing the violin, but I knew I had to do this. This was beyond anything the piano could give me. At the age I was in grade five (ten or eleven) the feeling of potential was intangible, inexplicable to me. It presented itself as an undeniable surge. My parents relented. My mother, on the condition I did not give up the piano. When I brought my violin home, I could not put it down. Maybe it was the challenge of pulling some nice sounds from the instrument, or the way I held it under my chin, like an extension of my arms. This was my instrument.

Early days: The first known photograph of me playing the violin. I was by no means a natural, but I loved that outfit!

The journey into music is infinitely rewarding. When I hear the instruments of the orchestra all around, playing the notes written so long ago, my heart stops. To play the music of Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, is a privilege beyond measure. How did I come to be here, in the violin section, creating this music? It started with that Heinzman Upright Grand. It’s not over yet.