Steinway Piano

Fifty-five years ago, Armidale City Council bought a Steinway Piano. Years of hammering by such luminaries as Geoffrey Parsons, Tamas Varsary, Idel Biret, Paul Badura Skoda and Roger Woodward slowly damaged its lustre and led to calls for restoration. Council, to its credit, stumped up the $32,000 (18,000 GBP) necessary for the task - aided in part by Musica Viva Australia. And, tonight, the grand piano's career was relaunched in the Armidale Town Hall (pictured) with a most unusual list of performers.

There were 8 works, all but one for solo piano; 10 performers (all local); four blokes and 6 sheilas; and seven of the performers were aged between 12 and 18!! I hazard a guess that few places of 25,000 people in the world would be able to offer high quality performances from this number and age of performers. The following notes amplify these remarks.

The difficult works presented brilliantly included:
1) a Granados Mazurka (played by an 18 year old);
2) a musically scenario about the big bang creation of the universe (written by a Malaysian born Australian, Sonny Chua) played by a 12 y.o. boy (Jol) whose father was born 50 years ago in Inner Mongolia!;
3) Chopin's Prelude #17 (Op 28) beautifully played by a 17 y.o. boy;
4) Sonnetto 104 del Petrarca from Liszt's Annees de Pelerinage (sorry no accents!) played skilfully by another 17 y.o. boy;
5) Saint-Saens' Piano Trio #2 played by three young girls from the Local Presbyterian Ladies College;
All these artists were school children!

In addition, their music teachers played two excellent piano duets (for one piano) by Debussy and Rachmaninov. And, to end with, the organisers gave the instrument to a local Paediatrician, Keith Power and he chose a beautiful work by Chopin that all of the world's great pianists adore: Chopin's Ballade #1. And, I imagine that most of those pianists would have been impressed by the cascades of sound Keith produced. The performance was electric and fast-paced.

And, the piano itself passed the test with flying colours. Well done all.

AS