Impromptu

The sun blazed through the windows of our house and warmed the living room just past comfortable. I was sitting at my piano with my back to the windows, and in order to see outside I had to turn completely around.  I stopped playing, turned around and looked up at Deer Valley Mountain, part of the Wasatch Mountain Range, rising above some small lakes about a mile away. Some find the ocean to be a locus of calm; for me, it’s the mountains. Especially the mountains in the summertime, with their cool streams, mountain lakes, and vast forests.

            I turned back to the piano and continued to practice. In front of me on the music stand was Chopin’s Ballade Number 1 in g minor. I find Chopin to be generally difficult to play but beautiful to listen to and the First Ballade was no exception. I’d been working on it for a couple months, making my way through it slowly, deliberately. Now I had memorized a lot of it and could play it, even the hard parts, without fumbling. Nobody had heard me play it other than my wife, and I expected nobody would—I hadn’t taken a piano lesson in years and I rarely played for anyone else.
            I started to play the Chopin again, from the beginning. A few minutes later, Carrie, my wife, who had been sitting on the deck reading, called to me through the screen doors.

            “Art, stop for a minute.”
            “What’s the matter?” I got up and walked to the screen doors. There was a man I’d never seen before standing on our deck. He was tan and fit, a nice-looking man with short brown hair and an open, friendly face. He wore khaki shorts, a dark blue tee shirt, and white sneakers. He appeared older than me, maybe in his early 60’s.

            “Art,” Carrie said, “this is John. He was walking by and heard you playing piano, so he stopped to listen.”

            “Hi Art, nice to meet you.” John held out his hand. He seemed friendly enough. What did he want? “My wife and I are renting the house up the street,” he said. “I was taking a walk when I heard the first Chopin Ballade. That was you, right?” I relaxed a bit. He seemed non-threatening and he knew something about music.

            “That was me. I’m just learning it,” I said.
            “Can I come in? I play piano, too. Will you play it for me? Maybe I can point out a couple of things to you.” I glanced over at Carrie, but she seemed as confused about the whole thing as I was. Other than my teachers and my mother, I never played for anyone. When I didn’t respond, he said, “I love that piece.”

            “Are you a piano teacher?”
            “No,” he said with an abashed smile. “I’m a pilot. I used to work for American Airlines. Now I fly privately, and the guy I fly for has a place in Park City, so I’m based here for the summer. But I went to Julliard, and that piece has always been one of my favorites.” Then he asked again: “Can I come in?”
            I’m typically unadventurous, so I was surprised when I said, “Sure. Yeah, c’mon in.”
Carrie stayed on the porch. I sat down at the piano and John stood next to me. As he reached for the music and turned it to the first page, he said, “You know, if Chopin hadn’t composed any other music but this Ballade, he would still be famous. He’d still be considered one of the great composers. That’s how amazing this piece is.” I considered that for a moment, then, hands trembling a bit, I started to play. When I got through the first section, John stopped me. “I like a lot of what you’re doing there. But you sound like someone who’s concentrating on hitting all the right notes.”
            “Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?”
            “Yeah, but you’re past that. Now you have to figure out how to make it sound beautiful. Play from the beginning. But don’t worry so much about getting the notes right. Play what you feel. Let go a little. Relax with it. You already know the notes. Now you have to make it sing.”
            The impromptu lesson went on like this for an hour. When it was over, John again told me again to stop thinking so much about hitting the right notes.

            “But that’s what I was taught to do since I was a kid!” I said, recalling how my piano teachers would stop me when I hit a wrong note and tell me to start again. 

            John shook his head. “Do you think of Chopin as a technical exercise or as a beautiful piece of music? If all you’re doing is proving that you can play it, technically, you’ll never uncover Chopin’s radiance.” He smiled. “And if you don’t, well, you’ll have missed the best part of being able to play the piano.”

            We finished the lesson and I walked to the kitchen, opened a bottle of wine and poured a couple of glasses. John, still at the piano, asked if he could play some Rachmaninoff he’d been working on. Of course he played beautifully. When he finished, he and I chatted over wine. We were interrupted by his cell phone. “My wife,” he said as he answered. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to worry you,” he explained, “I’ll be home soon. I’m just finishing a glass of wine with some nice people I met.” I asked John if she would join us, and a few minutes later the four of us were sitting engaged in a lively discussion about piano, about the concert series John and his wife oversaw in Florida where they lived, and about how Carrie reacted when John, a perfect stranger, asked if he could come in. An hour later we said goodbye and promised to see each other again.

            A few days later, I opened our front door and found a small envelope. In it was a note from John and a CD. In the note, John said his employer had to leave suddenly, and they wouldn’t be coming back to Park City. He’d enjoyed meeting us, he had fun giving me a lesson, and he wanted to give me the CD of a friend of his who was a particularly fine pianist. “Enjoy. Best, John.” I never saw him again.