Battling Bach

Bosendorfer Imperial 290 Concert Grand

It’s been quite a week, and getting our first (and hopefully final) offer on the house was, believe it or not, the least of it. This was the week that each year I spend the entire year preparing for, the week of the nationwide auditions of the National Piano Guild. Every year, at the first lesson after the June recital, we are assigned the four to six pieces that we will spend an entire year studying and practicing in preparation to perform before a concert pianist judge at the Guild auditions the following spring. This year – seven very challenging pieces from the likes of none other than Bach, Burgmuller, and Spindler, to name a few.



Bach and I have to do battle every single year. It is a requirement of the Guild that you perform at least one piece from each of the four periods of piano music. Since the piano was only invented in 1700, the four periods are the Baroque, which is Bach’s period, the Classical (Beethoven and Mozart, among others), the Romantic (Liszt and Schumann among many others), and the Modern period which is extraordinarily varied and eclectic encompassing many different styles and virtually everything that’s been composed since 1890. But the Baroque period really belongs almost exclusively to Bach so it’s pretty hard to find other composers of the Baroque style who wrote for the piano.

The piano is an instrument that was 3,000 years in the making and with over 10,000 parts (and over 2,000 moving parts), it is also by far the most sophisticated musical instrument ever invented. It is capable of producing literally millions of sounds and in a megahertz range that far exceeds the grasp of any other instrument. There’s a reason why it took 3,000 years to invent. It seemed to defy natural law. From the time the ancient Egyptians invented the first keyboard (a primitive water-powered organ) until 1750, keyboard makers did battle with two enormous mechanical engineering obstacles that proved consistently impossible to solve. Until 1750, conventional wisdom was that the piano was simply incompatible with the laws of physics. It was only due to a lifelong commitment on the part of master harpsichord maker Bartolomeo Cristofori from the Italian city of Padua that the piano finally came to be.

Cristofori began his quest in 1700, drawing up plans to solve the insurmountable problems that had mystified keyboard makers for three millenia. After twenty years in his workshop, he finally produced a prototype for the first pianoforte. The European community of musical maestros was completely underwhelmed and the dismal failure of this first piano only convinced the world that a piano could not be made and would never be an acceptable instrument. Undaunted, he went back to the grind for another ten years and produced a second prototype, again greeted with boos and jeers. This time however he persuaded none other than the world’s greatest composer, Johann Sebastian Bach, to play this new instrument. Like the rest of his peers, Bach hated it, saw no future for it at all. Unlike his other peers, Bach did Cristofori the enormous courtesy of a detailed critique of everything that was wrong with the new invention, probably knowing that the harpsichord maker had already wasted 30 years of his life on this futile quest and probably trying to persuade him to give it up.

Any lesser man probably would have gotten very frustrated by now and done just that. Instead, Cristofori took Bach’s critique to heart and went back to his workshop for another twenty years. By 1750 he had his third prototype and Bach once again agreed to give it a whirl. This time the world’s greatest musician absolutely loved it and became so enthusiastic that he decided to champion the new invention and promote it in concert halls all over Europe. Bach became the father of the piano and devoted the rest of his life to composing exclusively for this revolutionary new instrument. It was his patronage that persuaded the rest of the music world to take a second look and, when they did, they instantly recognized that Bach was right, that he had discovered something quite wonderful and earth-shattering. The piano soon became the "must" instrument to have at all the world’s great concert halls. But by the time the world had caught on, Bach had already been furiously composing for many years so was literally close to being the only piano composer during the Baroque period, certainly one of the very few composers of his level of genius. That’s why it’s impossible to study Baroque without studying Bach because he was pretty much it. He was composing while the rest of the world was still asleep at the switch over the invention of this amazing new instrument.

But Bach is difficult. Bach is precision personified. Bach is technique to the nth degree. And Bach is also wonderfully beautifully soulful. Since there isn’t really a whole lot to choose from other than Bach for the Baroque period, I’ve been playing a Bach piece every year for the past five years, taking a full year to master each one. Doing justice to Bach is a huge battle.

This year was the biggest battle of all. This year I played his Musette in D and it’s one of the most challenging pieces I’ve ever studied. The Musette in D requires a lot of jumps. The human hand can very comfortably stretch a full octave but, beyond that, you have to literally lift your hand completely away from the keys and jump to the next note. When you have to do this at a fast tempo and precision is everything - and in the Baroque style precision is everything - it is a battle. Up until now, I maybe had one piece each year that had maybe one jump and it was usually at a slow tempo so the jumps weren’t too bad. The Musette in D has jumps - big jumps - every other measure and is played at a pretty fast tempo.

And it wasn’t just Bach this year that proved to be a genuine battle. The Classical and Romantic pieces were also hugely challenging considerably beyond anything I’ve attempted before. You’ll recall that I was really disappointed in January when Pam told me I wasn’t ready for 8^th level and had to remain in 7^th level for another year. It took me about a month to realize that she was absolutely right. I practiced these pieces for six months before I was able to appreciate how truly technically challenging they were. Spindler’s Sonatina in C also has several big jumps in it and is played at even faster tempo than the Musette, plus with sixteenth-notes to boot. At least I only had to contend with eighth-notes with Bach. But by far the biggest surprise was Burgmuller’s Arabesque. When I started it in June, I thought it would take at most three weeks to knock it down. It’s played allegro (extremely fast) and is an almost continuous barrage of eighth-notes beginning to end. I realized by the end of the summer that I couldn’t even begin to play them evenly, that I was so far off base that I couldn’t even hear that they were uneven. Week after week I would play them at the lesson, thinking I had mastered it, only to be informed by Pam that the eighth-notes were still massively uneven. For months Pam had me doing daily rhythm exercises in an attempt to train my ear to at least hear the unevenness, because you can’t fix it if you can’t even hear it. As of about six weeks ago, I still wasn’t able to hear it at all.

That’s when I started getting nervous. I had been studying this piece for nine months and it wasn’t getting any better. It was looking like it was never going to be better, I was never going to lick this thing. I had hit a wall. I was never going to get better than I was right now. For the first time, I was not going to have these pieces ready in time for Guild. But as it goes with all good teachers, when one thing wasn’t working we’d try something else and just kept experimenting with different strategies. About three weeks ago, it finally sank in. I was finally able to hear my uneven eighth-notes and fix them.

Due to these challenges, I was more nervous than usual as Guild date approached. I started becoming very nervous last Saturday (Guild was on Tuesday) with this feeling of dread hanging over me. Every year, the day before Guild, I’m always kicking myself, "Why did I sign up for this! What was I thinking!" This year it started three days before Guild but I have to assume that with all the other stresses that I’m dealing with right now closing out the estate and preparing the house for sale, that all that might just be aggravating things. I was hoping that most of it was Guild, though. My audition was to be at 12:15 on Tuesday. I would be on stage in front of the judge for 20 minutes. At the 25 minute mark, I’d know. If I was feeling better, I’d know.

I felt more ill-prepared than in any other year. Yes, I had conquered the evenness and was even giving Bach a real run for his money. But those were just the basics. I had not yet had a chance to really focus on all the subtle polish that each of these pieces required. One thing that is so wonderful about playing an instrument is that it exercises both sides of your brain. There is a technical mastery that is an absolute requirement for any piece but then, once you’ve licked that and it becomes second nature, then you throw it away and start searching for the soul of the machine. What is the composer trying to say and how do you express that with your touch? Ordinarily, we have the technical aspects of a piece nailed a good two months before Guild and then spend those final weeks working on expressing all the subtlety of the musicality. This year I was down to the last week and was just beginning to study the soul of each piece. It was too late. Forget about playing well. Just go in there and try not to botch up the technique again. Maybe I’ll get a kind judge. I hope I don’t have to do a third year at 7^th level.

This year for the first time the auditions were held at Evola Music on Telegraph. As I’m being called into the recital hall (feeling like I’m being marched to the gallows), the first huge surprise is that Evola has provided their very finest piano for these auditions. I would be performing on what may be the greatest piano in world, the Bosendorfer 9-foot Imperial 290 Concert grand. This was a gorgeous $400,000 mahogany piano. The judge is a lady concert pianist from Los Angeles and I immediately impress her when I ask permission to do a chord study to get a feel for the keyboard before I start playing. Then I play the Musette in D. I feel I am making considerable mistakes, not quite hitting some of the jumps on tempo, but at least playing with feeling and making it a point to avoid the biggest no-no, which is trying to fix your mistakes. When you’re performing, no matter what goes wrong, you just keep going. Pam has oftened advised us to practice with the radio and television blasting and any other obnoxious distractions you can invent so that you condition yourself to keep your composure if and when things go wrong. You ignore the problems and keep going. I was successful in doing at least that much. I spent a good deal of time Monday evening playing all the pieces with the stereo blasting. I think that may have made the difference.

I feel I’ve played it far from my best, and when I’m done the judge just gasps. Uh-oh, she’s going to tell me I just butchered the piece. I’ve lost my battle with Bach. And then she declares quite soulfully, "You really have a feel for the Baroque style. If Bach himself were here, I believe he would say that you played it exactly the way he would have liked it played."

Wow! I guess I’m doing better than I thought. Then I did the Classical piece, Kirnberger’s Bourree in A Minor and more of the same. "You really have a wonderful musical touch and intuition." And on and on through Spindler, Burgmuller, then the jazz piece and finally the boogie-woogie. "It is such a delight to listen to someone who actually knows how to play!" "You are one of the best students at your level I’ve ever heard." I’ve had judges compliment me before but this lady was way over the top. She was pouring it on so thick that I was doubting that she was just being nice for its own sake. Would my report card reflect these comments? She must have sensed that I was thinking this because she suddenly blurted out, "Oh, trust me, if you were playing lousy, I’d say so!"

I thanked her for her kind words and she responded in kind, "No, thank YOU for coming. You’ve made my day." And I told her that she’s made my year! I said that’s the reason why I do Guild. As nerve-wracking as it is, it is so immensely rewarding to have someone who is not your teacher validate your progress, especially someone of her caliber. Guild always leaves me on a high that I can ride all summer long. I said this year’s high will probably last me until Christmas.

And then she poured on the final gusher. "Well you are a very GOOD pianist, and you are going to just keep getting better. PLEASE stay with it!" I assured her it was my intention to go all the way. If I lived long enough, I was going to complete all 21 levels of the Guild curriculum, perhaps even get lucky enough to eventually get accepted into the piano program at Oakland University.

So I left. Pam was right outside the door waiting for me and she started gushing. "Good job!!! That is the best you have ever played!" I guess there’s a lot to be said for the adrenaline focus you achieve from the stage fright you experience while performing. I didn’t have my grades yet; that would have to wait until Thursday. But it didn’t matter. I was on a high, and it was going to last a long time.

My only regret is that I was given an opportunity to play on what was arguably the finest piano in the world and I was too nervous to enjoy it. But now it was over. The feeling of dread had lifted, the stress and anxiety were all gone. I had my answer. I had done battle with Bach. And I had won!

I would be anxiously awaiting my Thursday lesson and getting my grades. Would her comments be reflected in the grades? Or was she bipolar and simply feigning all the enthusiasm? Had she complimented everyone this way? And what would Pam’s plan be for me now? Would we follow the same pattern as prior years and spend the summer enjoying easier pieces, deciding in the fall the fateful question of whether I was ready for 8^th level now? Would I even have to wait until January to find out if she would allow me to compete for 8^th level next spring?

Just when I thought things couldn’t get any better, and being very cautious not to be overly optimistic, Pam showed me the report card Thursday and it certainly did reflect the comments. It was a solid mixture of A’s and A-pluses. I had even gotten an A on sight-reading, something that has never happened before. This was particularly surprising since I had botched the sight-reading exercise, playing the first measure in quarter-notes when it was written in eighths. I did catch the mistake right away and played the remainder of the piece correctly. But that was quite a glaring error and I thought for sure the best I had done was a B. No, this lady was not bipolar, a comment Pam found very amusing. Quite the contrary. Pam revealed to me that she had a reputation for being a very tough judge and she was very tough on the other students. There were a lot of B’s and C’s given out this year and, almost unheard of, even one F. Of course, she said the boy who failed deserved it. He hadn’t taken it at all seriously and had only starting practicing two weeks ago. She was grateful that the judge had flunked him and hoping it would be a wake-up call that he’s got to buckle down.

But Pam assured me. This lady was very tough and very good. If she said she thought I was good, I could take that to the bank. She even wrote on the comment card that I was one of the best students she had ever listened to.

And now it was time for the $64,000 question. What’s next? Good had become very good, and now very good was about to become best. Without hesitation, she declared that I was ready for 8^th level, pulled out the Guild curriculum guide, and we spent the remainder of the lesson getting started on selecting the 8^th level pieces I’ll spend the next 12 months studying in preparation for next spring’s audition. They are all very beautiful, very sophisticated ... and VERY difficult, representing a quantum leap forward in technical mastery. I didn’t have to wait until September, let alone January. I am moving up, can’t wait until this time next year and how much better I’ll be. 

We’re getting started with Burgmuller’s Ballade, Kabalevsky’s Toccatina, my first foray into the advanced musical form known as the "invention," and an old favorite - Clementi’s 3^rd sonatina. I played the first sonatina last year; each one is more difficult, and more beautiful, than the last. I guess we’re skipping #2 and going right to #3.

And of course, as always, Bach. This time, the very lovely Prelude in C Major. It’s going to be a very rewarding year. 



And saving the very best for the very last. Pam informs me that the gorgeous Bosendorfer I played was in the regular stock at Evola. I should be able to go back there next week and play it again. And this time actually enjoy it. A $400,000 piano. It is a dream!