…if you have a Stuart piano, the last thing you want to do is not play it. So even though I need to keep my head down as much as possible for the next few days after my operation (and indeed have been doing so except for the last 50 minutes when I’ve been on the phone trying to get my mobile telephone bills fixed), I couldn’t resist the temptation to sit down at the piano and let loose for a short while.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that I really was suffering no apparent ill effects – and despite having literally a one-eyed approach to playing found that the musical flow and sound generated by my fingers was actually a bit better than before the operation since my left eye was no longer interfering with my vision.
The moral of the story? Have a retinal detachment every four months.
Somehow, I don’t think that’s the answer. But it is, as I’ve experienced before, essential to know where one is on the keyboard at any one point in time and my visual problems have only accented that need. We all take things for granted until they go wrong and it really points out the necessity of taking advantage of the good times (where the word good means ‘not bad’) whilst you can.
I have another two months at least at home now, and so once my eye settles down a bit I really must try to progress further in the piano, oboe and cor anglais. I’m going to have a good look at a lot of modern classical music to try to identify music that would suit the Stuart – there is much good stuff out there ready to be examined and it will a good intellectual exercise for me. The cor is coming along nicely although I’m still working on how to switch octaves properly and also how to play the C# better, since my little finger on my right hand is just a wee bit too small.
I had the oboe examined by a very good double reed technician a couple of weeks back and he identified a crack in the top joint which needed some extensive repair work. After some consultation with Patricola in Italy, they asked me to send the oboe to them for repair. I did that, and was somewhat surprised when they were unable to find the crack – it had apparently closed completely. Nonetheless, they replaced the upper part with a new one and it’s now on its way back to Australia (it’s currently somewhere in the East Midlands in UK which is actually not such a bad place to be).
Now I have to set up my recording equipment again…