Long Ode to My Piano

I gave up the piano over 10 years ago.

My piano was once my father's piano, when he and his brothers learned, once upon a time, to play the instrument back in the late Fifties in Hong Kong. The piano then sat there for another 30-odd years with various ornaments and bric-a-brac atop it, being generally ignored and unplayed.

When I was 8 years old, my father had the idea of getting me to take on piano lessons and, once I'd agreed, he sent for the piano to be shipped over from my Grandmother's 14th floor apartment in Hong Kong on a 2 month journey to make it to our family home in Chislehurst.

My teacher was a frizzy silver haired Polish woman who was matronly and in my eyes, kindly strict. She had a warm smile with eyes that crinkled happily but was all business when it came to lessons.

I enjoyed learning the piano. I liked that I seemed to pick it up quite quickly and that I might one day be able to play the pieces I'd loved since earlier childhood - namely Für Elise (as that was what played on a wind-up tinkly sounding gadget my mother used to have lying about in one of her junk drawers) and Golliwogg's Cakewalk (because that was the music that played in a very old computer game I used to play that involved a mouse in a maze to get some cheese.)

My teacher said I had a gift for the piano. I didn't understand how other people could find it so hard to press down on the right notes in the right rhythm if they had the sheets in front of them - it's just like reading, isn't it?

Looking back, I'm not sure if the gift was a natural talent that was in me the whole time, or if it was down to the mandatory half-hour practice that my Father made me do on a daily basis.

Then the theory lessons started. I ended up going from weekly half hour lessons to sitting in that stale cigarette and air freshener scented house 90 minutes a week. I was doing a grade a year. And I still didn't understand the big fuss about playing - it was just something I could do.

I longed to quit playing simply because I didn't see why I should be under such pressure to do these exams, run through all the scales or study theory - and I still don't. My teacher made me cry during one theory session as I could not understand what it was that she was trying to teach me and our frustration with each other came out.

My father made me cry countless times from forcing me to practice. I remember one horrible evening where I was all but dragged into the piano room (yes I had a whole room dedicated to the torturous art) and sobbed as I played whilst my father sat on a stool behind me, arms crossed and glaring angrily at the back of my head. He would should at me to start again from the beginning if so much as one key was off.

If the consistency between playing well at my teacher's house or at home was questioned, I would put it down to the fact that my piano only needed a very soft touch to produce FORTE music but that my teacher's piano was so very much more solidly constructed than mine that I found it very challenging to play legato. No one believed me - but no one else was playing between two pianos were they.

I remember the pride I felt when taking part in the annual piano concerts that my teacher put on, taking place in Blackheath music hall - I just KNEW that I played in an accomplished manner for my age when compared to my peers's performances. I loathed the exams but I somehow managed to excel in all of the 4 exams that I took.

I quit some time in between my father leaving us (ironically to focus on his own passion for music) and my GCSE's. I didn't have the decency to speak to my own teacher to tell her I no longer wanted to learn. I can still imagine the hurt and disappointment she must have felt to have my mother call her to tell her I wouldn't be attending any further lessons due to "exam pressure" and wanting to focus on my studies. I'm sure my teacher would have been further disappointed if she'd ever found out how any of my academic results were.

I'm now 26 and I've just made my old classical music album into MP3's and playing them on my iPod now. I've just decided that my all-time favourite composer is Claude Debussy, but that my favourite piece is Gymnopedie No.1 by Erik Satie. I never much cared for Pachebel's Canon, overplayed as it is, and Für Elise has been so done - especially as that became the most requested piece for me to play for people. I learned to play the famous pieces by Mozart and Beethoven. I even learned some pieces by some Russian composers I think.

A few years ago I started to teach myself to play pieces that my teacher and I left unfinished, and some new pieces to which I'd always wanted to play but had stopped my musical education before any such chances appeared. It was strange that after a few run-throughs of the last-learned pieces that my fingers seems to vaguely remember where they needed to be. And I found that if I concentrate too hard on the sheets in front of me, trying to read everything, that I lost the ability to play naturally - but if I just let myself play and glazed over the notes on the score before me, that the music produced itself without my needing to force it.

The piano has been sitting in an alcove in my mother's house for almost 7 years now. It hasn't been played for almost 6 years. It sits there with various ornaments and bric-a-brac atop it (comfortingly for me, but most probably disturbingly worrying to anyone else, with the ashes of my first dog who used to lie at my feet as I played) , being generally ignored and unplayed. Every few years, I feel the call of the piano, who is probably longing to be lovingly played. I was going to add "once again" but in all honesty, it never was lovingly played until after I finished my piano lessons.

I once proved to myself that without the aid of a teacher, just my own perseverance, my longing to play again and the bizarre memory my fingers seemed to have, I could still play the piano - with a little practice of course.