Like Anna Goldsworthy I had lessons from a continental pianist with a gift for teaching soul as well as brain and hand. Unlike Anna I didn't aspire to or even dream of the concert platform. My teacher, Miss Feledi, fled Hungary after the war and washed up in Sydney. Like Mrs Sivan she could change the mood of a piece from within. Under her fingers the piano keys could evoke joy, melancholy, dreaminess or grief from the same sequence of notes. To demonstrate the touch required for a certain passage she would grasp my hand and sweep her fingers from my shoulder down to my fingertips. On another day we would caress the keys and 'sing' with our softly curled fingers.
Anna's book is a tribute to Mrs Sivan and her pianistic and teaching skill but it is also a merciless expose of her own growth from ignorant child through peer-governed adolescence to over-confident university student. Her gaffes as well as her triumphs are chronicled and dissected. She reveals the doubts and obsessions of a high achieving girl and how she ultimately chooses her love of the piano over the other paths open to her.
I was returned to the root of my love of music and making music and wish I had known Miss Feledi in my adult years. So much would make sense now that as a school girl I only dimly understood.
No comments:
Post a Comment