One of the reasons that I bought a Stuart piano in the first place was that, at least in the back of my mind, I needed to get what was left of my performing skills back to whatever level my mind and fingers would allow me to do. Whilst I haven’t really put as much effort into the technical side as I should have (I always was lazy in that respect, much to my teacher’s chagrin) I think that over the past couple of years my playing has become more assured and confident, at least when I was listening to the results.
But there’s nothing like performing in public, and I must admit the prospect of so doing made me somewhat nervous, the reason being that I haven’t given anything like a full solo piano recital for so many years that quite frankly I can’t remember when or where the last time was. That doesn’t mean I haven’t performed musically – I do a lot of church music, both as an organist and, with my family, on other instruments – but I haven’t exposed myself to the gaze of an audience who are specifically there to hear me play for many, many years.
So it was with some trepidation that I finally summoned up the courage to arrange a function where I could do just that, and it was pleasing that I was able to achieve a number of different aims at the same time.
Firstly, I was able to get a number of friends and family to attend a barbeque at my house.
Rule #1 – provide good food and good wine. Secondly, the BBQ was a fundraising event to assist a friend of mine who is aiming to build a much needed children’s hospital in his home country of Sierra Leone, which has the highest infant and child mortality rate in Africa.
Rule #2 – a (very) good cause. I was also very pleased and grateful that Wayne and Katie Stuart gave up their time to come down from Newcastle to meet everyone and talk about pianos and all sorts of other things. So I used the occasion to demonstrate in practice some of the features of the Stuart piano, and this became the test of my performing ability and where I currently stand in that regard.
Rule #3 – add value to the occasion.
Rule #1 – we had barbequed fish, octopus, prawns, steak, chicken and pork together with cauliflower cheese, roast vegetable salad, humungous prawn crackers, bread, cheese, Filipino ice cream + much more. A good selection of white and red Australian wines plus many bottles of cranberry and pink grapefruit juice and soft drinks for those with delicate stomachs rounded off the menu.
Rule #2 – we raised over $1250 for the hospital. My thanks to all – great stuff.
Rule #3 – Wayne spent most of his time talking about pianos – and everyone learnt quite a bit during that process, and I certainly think that between the two of us we got the main point across of the piano being deliberately designed to expand the capabilities of the ‘traditional’ piano for all kinds of music, but especially for the 21st century.
And my performance? By and large I was happy with the way I played. I deliberately chose a varied programme which included Louis Couperin, Bach, Chopin, Debussy, Pärt, Vine and Gottschalk to firstly allow me to settle in to the performance properly and not be too ambitious first up, but also to provide sufficient variation to show what I could do and what the piano was capable of producing. I also had the advantage that I was close to the audience and was able to interact properly – and I always was good at communicating in that way without ever going close to GBH on the earhole.
An interesting sidelight was that despite the piano being in a relatively small room (it does need to be bigger) and that I really let loose on a couple of pieces, no-one complained about the piano being too loud – and Wayne made sure beforehand that the piano was optimally voiced. That really puts the lie to views that this kind of piano (at least the 2.2 metre version) needs to be voiced down for home use. The piano’s exceptional clarity means that loudness does not equate to murkiness – the sound is much more pleasurable to the ear no matter what the volume.
So now two things have come of the event. Firstly, everyone who was there wanted a repeat event in the future, so tentatively we are looking around the end of September for that to occur. Secondly, I have to raise the bar again with respect to my own playing. I suppose that this is a natural consequence of the process I established 30 months ago now. The momentum has been a bit slow coming – but that’s because I’ve had a long way to come to get to this stage. Now, I have to find more hours in the day – I’m not sure how to identify where I get the time from. Something’s got to give…
There’s no turning back, now, I suspect.