Con Sentimento

I went to the Brooks Center today after work and, on a whim, decided to check if the recital hall was open. It was. Andrew was in it.

Andrew is this guy who's taking applied piano lessons. I've heard him play a song from the famous French composer Debussy before and I instantly liked it. With this in mind, I immediately sat down on the steps of the audience chamber and asked Andrew if I could listen to him play. He said yes. Tentatively. He probably thought I was weird...And he would be correct.

Anyway, so I sat and listened to him for forty minutes. He started with a pensive, sad song that I initially thought was from the soundtrack of the French movie Amelie. It wasn't. Apparently, the entire time he was playing, he was just "messing around." He told me that the music he was performing was something he wrote himself and a little bit of what his dad wrote.

Let me tell ya, the guy plays like a genius. He says that he plays by ear so he's not very good at reading music. Nonetheless, he plays spectacularly. I would give up all my music reading ability to play like that. He's so expressive with the piano. It's like the instrument is his old friend and he's taking it by the hand and saying, "Let's go on an adventure."

Aside from the Yann Tiersen music, his performance reminded me of a lot of things. Sad, spiritual songs. The Trail of Tears. Savagery and dehumanization. I closed my eyes for most of the performance and images flashed through my mind: people riding bikes down rain-slicked streets, old friends meeting each other again after years apart, best friends who suddenly look at each other and realize they've found someone they want to spend the rest of their life with...Then he stopped and asked the audience (me) what kind of music they played. The audience (me again) said that they were assigned to play a song called Sonatina. What I should have said was that I liked to play waltzes...romantic pieces...slow, pensive music. But I wanted to hear him play more so I just said "sonatina" and then shut up. He stopped after a while and he seemed to be struggling to think of something to play. I knew this instinctually so I rose, gathered my stuff, and thanked him before I left.

What a night! What a musician. What I wouldn't give to play like him. With feeling. Or, as the Italians say, "con sentimento."