The Carthage music department officially unwrapped its newest toy yesterday afternoon- and what a spectacular toy it is! It’s our long-needed, long-coveted new Steinway 9-foot concert grand piano – and through most of yesterday’s dedication recital, most of us were still pinching ourselves to make certain that we weren’t dreaming and that this new piano was really here and really ours. Dr. Peter Dennee, our department chair, pointed out in a recent email that – as far as we can determine – this is the first NEW concert grand piano that the Carthage music department has ever owned in our entire history, so this was a reason for exceptional celebration.
For years now, Carthage has been limping along with two battered, bruised Steinway concert grand pianos in Siebert Chapel that had been satisfactory instruments once upon a time but were way past their prime and wholly inadequate for anything requiring a first-class piano. Of course, it’s not like we were talking about a new copy machine for the office or new mallets for the xylophone. A new concert grand would cost more than what Kathy and I paid for our first home, and that kind of enormous expenditure is not easily or quickly made. Many attempts – many requests – were made over the years but all for naught, until now. And exactly because it was such an incredibly long wait, it’s arrival at last feels like nothing less than a miracle.
Most of us first heard of this splendid turn of events at our music faculty retreat in mid-August. Not long after that, Dr. Jane Livingston (our keyboard coordinator) traveled to New York City – right around the time of the big hurricane, as a matter of fact – and picked out the instrument. (What a thrill that had to be for her!) It was shipped to us in late September, just in time for homecoming, and I actually had the tremendous thrill of playing the instrument at our alumni recital the first Sunday in October. A former student of mine, Nick Sluss-Rodionov, sang Schubert’s Der Doppelganger, and I accompanied him on the new Steinway, and being one of the very first Carthaginians to play that gorgeous instrument was an incredible thrill.
We did unveil it briefly that day, but it was pretty much under lock and key after that – awaiting final tuning and registration as well as a proper dedication, which happened yesterday. Three of our piano faculty – the aforementioned Jane Livingston, Debbie Maslowski, and Adam Marks played a spectacular recital which showed off the instrument in a number of ways. Among the three of them they played a wonderful assortment of solo pieces by Byrd, Chopin, Bartok, Messiaen, Copland – plus two piano four-hands duets by Mozart and Debussy – and even a bit of lovely chamber music in which Professor Maslowski was joined by her brilliantly talented young daughters (violin and cello). For the recital’s finale, Jane Livingston asked me to join her in a performance of Richard Addinsell’s “Warsaw Concerto,” a fabulous miniature concerto he composed for the 1943 film “Dangerous Moonlight” – a crowd-pleaser if there ever was one. Jane, of course, played the solo part on the new Steinway while I played a piano reduction of the orchestral accompaniment on one of our old Steinways…. which sort of felt like driving your dad’s ’55 Edsel while your friend gets to drive the new Ferrari. But it was thrilling all the same – and as Dr. Dennee so aptly put it in his introductory remarks, by including one work on the program which involved one of our old Steinways, it allowed everyone in the audience to understand just how exquisite this new instrument is in comparison to the clunky old one.
I have been teaching at Carthage since 1991, and in those twenty years I think this recital stands out as one of our department’s finest hours. And what a privilege to have been a tiny part of it, even if I did end up driving the Edsel.
pictured above: Jane Livingston playing a solo by Chopin on our new Steinway. The old Steinway (the Edsel) is sitting to the left of it. Actually, it’s something of an exaggeration to call it an Edsel. Maybe it was more like a beat up Chevrolet Caprice Classic – that’s the old blue station wagon that Kathy’s dad owned for so many years.