Sunday with Sylvie

[vaneramos]

All this time around pipe organs (and delightedly listening to CBC Radio Two all day in Les's shop) has left me hankering to play piano, so I phoned Sylvie. This has been by far my most enduring friendship of the past decade. I had known her distantly through the Rainbow Chorus for a year or so when we hooked up at a party in January six years ago and discovered a shared passion for playing piano, particularly the Romantics. She has a piano in her apartment now.

First we went for one of our long walks, around old Guelph in the snow. She treated me to a hot chocolate at With The Grain, the delectable café where she, Sarah and Jaye work.

Goldie Mill is one of several similar ruined structures preserved and protected along the Speed and Eramosa Rivers in Guelph, however until today I somehow managed to never visit it. I lived on Goldie Street in the village of Paisley, 90 minutes north of here, from 1989 to 1991, and on Goldie Avenue in Guelph from 1991 to 1993. Who was this James Goldie person? He bought the mill in 1866, and the family managed it until 1916.

Back at Sylvie's place, we leaned my boots against the baseboard heater to dry them out. I was standing in the quiet living room when one computer component, on a top shelf beside the printer, moved and looked at me. It was her lovely Himalayan cat, Willow.

The piano drew me like a magnet. While she cooked, I played some of my favourite pieces by Beethoven, Borodin, Chopin, Rachmaninoff and Brahms until Sarah came home. Then I took a break for conversation and risotto. Never made it to Tchaikovsky.

After dinner Sarah had to leave for a meeting. Sylvie and I did what we've talked about for years but never done, tried some pieces for piano four hands: Song of India, Anitra's Dance, Schubert's Serenade, Offenbach's Barcarole. We struggled, got lost together, made some music, laughed, hugged, and promised to do this more often. It's harder to find time now, but we'll make it.

Comments

[songdogmi.livejournal.com]

That sounds absolutely wonderful -- the whole day, and in particular the music.

[rsc.livejournal.com]

I, of course, want to know which Beethoven and which Brahms.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Music seems to be playing a bigger and bigger role in my life, and I'm delighted with that.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

Brahms Intermezzo Op. 118 No. 2 is one of my two favourite piano pieces, along with Rachmaninoff's Prelude in D Major, Op. 23 No. 4. They are the perfect embodiments of poetry in music. They both have a profound sense of nostalgia, although the Brahms is warmer and the Rachmaninoff more melancholy.

For years I lost half of my piano music collection. Most of the books turned up in a forgotten trunk in the basement about four years ago, but my two volumes of the complete Beethoven piano sonatas are apparently lost forever. Someday when I have frequent access to a piano again I will replace them. Sylvie has some of them in her collection of course, so I found and played my favourite movement from them, which falls into a similar romantic category: the Andante cantabile from the Pathetique Sonata.

[rsc.livejournal.com]

Maybe I mentioned this in a previous exchange, but the Brahms Op. 118 #2 is one of my absolutely favorite pieces to play. I first learned it in my teens, and it's probably the only piece I've maintained in my fingers more or less uninterruptedly (except for periods when I wasn't playing at all) since then.

It's too bad (or maybe not) that there are no recordings (that I know of) of me playing it 45 years ago; it would be interesting to compare my interpretations then and now.

[vaneramos.livejournal.com]

I don't remember you mentioning that. Well then we share a favourite! I don't recall with certainty, but think it's one of the few pieces I discovered after I had stopped taking lessons, and took the time to teach myself to play it well. Now I only get to play piano a couple times a year, so I can't play it as well, but it's still always a pleasure.