Listening to Tchaikovsky

 

The performance hall is full; the lights are lowered and the stage is lit. The softness of the violins and cellos become grounded by the bass. Gradually the violas, oboes and flutes join in. A radiant expectation illuminates the face of the piano soloist. He strikes each key and chord as if this is the last chance he has to play this beautiful piece, Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto. The music grabs my soul and doesn't let go. Suddenly like warp speed I am a millions miles away, a thousand years into a nebulous future. My mind gathers each cherished note like a fragile bird about to fly away. Then the notes become whispers and the whispers become thoughts as I am brought back into my body.

I am a child of eight and my father has signed our family up to buy phonograph records at the super market. Our subscription will bring us a new classical record each month. Dad has recently purchased a stereo system in a small shiny maple box and one extremely special record. “This piece of music,” my Dad tells me, “is the golden egg. You will never hear anything more beautiful than this.” He lovingly places this record on the turntable and then it begins to spin. Instantly, I enter a world I never knew existed. “There are the horns,” mentions my father. A few minutes later there is this amazing, invigorating dance-like melody. Then this melody transforms into a lilting jubilation of strings. My father beams as he sees the shadow of magical awe cross my small face. “This is Tchaikovsky! He was born in Russia but he loved to travel. He once traveled to Italy and fell in love with all the warm weather smells and the colorful, lush scenery. This piece called “Capriccio Italien” is my favorite.”

I place my hand gently on my husband's knee. He smiles as he sees the brightness of my eyes. I think about how much I love him and love my daughter who is now grown and a few hundred miles north. I remember taking her as a child to this very performance hall, introducing her to Beethoven and Brahms, Mozart and yes, Tchaikovsky. There were piano lessons and then her love of cello for several years. But I couldn't awaken her classical soul like my father did mine. I sit listening to the pianist's passionate trilling of the keys and wonder why I couldn't transfer this magic. The daughter does love music, especially Inde Rock, and has found her passion through playing and writing songs for the guitar. I hear her timid voice and the complexity of her chords. She has her father's gift of instinctively knowing music at its core rather than through the written page.

The clouds of thought continue to fill my brain. Where do I want to go now? I am in my sixties. My father died in his sixties. I do feel as though I am on the last leg of my journey. The orchestra and piano lean towards and away from each other, each part of the piece, a slice of the whole. I have had my slices of youthful travel, falling in love, studying, mothering, teaching. Tchaikovsky echoes my restlessness. I have never been able to sit still for long...except to listen, except to write, except to love.

My dad was a spontaneous wanderer. He scooped us children up one holiday weekend and told us we were going to see a ballet. There we were at the outdoor Los Angeles Greek Theater ticket office trying to buy tickets to a nearly sold out performance. My younger sister and I sat close to the stage, my father a few rows behind us. We had never been to a ballet before and this was the New York City Ballet doing Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite. What I remember to this day is the decorated Christmas tree rising majestically from the middle of the stage. This gigantic tree became my childhood symbol of pure happiness, for those moments of watching the dancers and hearing the traditional classical suite lifted me all the way to the heavens.

The sweetness of the Andante is coming to a close. How to slow down these precious moments of living. How to remember to take more time for the things I love, for listening to Tchaikovsky. I want to remain right where I am in Orchestra Row P on the right hand side, mesmerized by the skills of the musicians forever. This is one of those “moments of being” the writer Virginia Woolf talks about in A Room of One's Own. My body is swaying with the rhythms of the music and my hands are itching towards movement. The Allegro begins and I am a child standing in our living room, one of the subscription records blasting from the stereo. My hands are distinctly waving and chopping the air in front of me. I am on a podium in front of a full orchestra and I am the conductor. I feel the power as I bend the musicians to my will.

I want to learn piano but my family has little money for lessons. My father buys a wood worn and scratched upright piano for $200. He says he wants to see if I really do want to play piano. I get beginner books; I find a long and narrow cardboard fold-out that can be placed just above the keys and show the notes with numbers. At first I pick out the numbers on the page with the numbers assigned to the keys. My mother once took piano lessons and she gives me her knowledge in small doses. I end up reading music and playing some classical and Broadway show tunes. Later at college I will find an empty piano practice room and play to unwind from the academic stress.

Tchaikovsky's amazing concerto is ending and the sadness of my soul is palpable. Music has carried me through family traumas, my growing up years and my own parenting sagas. My father was both a beautiful and terrifying man. He surprised me one birthday with a brand new maple spinet piano which now lovingly sits in my living room. Then throughout my adolescence I waited inside the house in fear when I heard my father's creaking of the backyard gate. Would his face be flushed with red hot anger or full of tender gentleness? My father's complex, volatile nature both enriched and took away from what could have been a completely happy childhood. But aging and maturing has given me the insight that we each learn in the course of our living to put our childhoods to bed. I choose to remember the beauty. I choose to sway with the music. I choose to listen to Tchaikovsky.