My adventures at the piano keyboard |
My mother being a piano teacher and my sister an accomplished pianist, I grew up to the sound of classical piano music. However, my own attempts to master the instrument were not successful, despite strenuous efforts on the part of my mother to teach me.
From the age of seven I was drilled in a regime of practice involving five-finger exercises, scales, arpeggios and other keyboard acrobatics. But I fell short of perfect pitch and I had neither the diligence nor the digital dexterity to become another Rubenstein.
This did not stop me from fantasizing, Walter Mitty-like, that it was me performing whenever I heard a recording of one of the great masters. Unfortunately, fantasy often stumbles over reality, just as I stumbled over the minuets, gavottes, sonatinas and other charming pieces by Mozart, Handel and Beethoven fed to me by my mother.
My progress towards virtuosity was both helped and hindered by my mother’s insistence on a daily practice regime. It was a case of an........