Passage I

LITERARY NARRATIVE: Passage A is adapted from the memoir The Piano Shop on the Left Bank by Thad Carhart(©2001 by T.E. Carhart). Passage B is adapted from the article "Me and My Violin" by Arnold Steinhardt (©2014 by Listen: Life with Classical Music).

Passage A by Thad Carhart

Even when Luc was busy and could not talk he always made me welcome and allowed me to wander around the inner sanctum of the back room on my own. When things were quieter, he seemed glad of the company and would tell me about the pianos that had just arrived. Our talks made real for me one of his fundamental beliefs, that each and every piano had completely individual characteristics, even if of the same manufacturer and age.

Sometimes he knew all the details, had even met the owners and talked about their instrument with them and knew intimately how they had treated it. Other times he knew nothing beyond what he could see, feel, or hear. Most often pianos came to him from auctions and charity sales, their history anonymous. But even then, like an expert in artifacts, he could deduce a great deal: whether a piano had been played much or little, whether it had been in an environment with the proper level of humidity (one of his cardinal rules), whether there had been children in the household, even whether it had recently been transported by ship. ("The worst thing you can possibly do to a piano," he told me more than once.) At these moments he was part detective, part archaeologist, part social critic.

His attitude about how people treated their pianos seemed to mirror his philosophy of life. While regretting the depredations worked by children on keyboards and strings, he regarded them as tolerable because the piano was at least used and, as he put it, "au sein de la famille" ("at the heart of the family"). It was more than just any piece of furniture, but it was that, too, and if drinks were spilled and stains bit into shiny finishes, it was the price one paid for initiating the young to a joy that should stem from familiarity rather than reverence.

Those who preserved their piano as an altar upon which the art of music was to be worshipped irritated Luc, but he was deeply respectful of serious musicians who used and depended upon their instrument for their livelihood.

Passage B by Arnold Steinhardt

Marc Lifschey, one of the greatest oboists of his era, told me that after retiring as a performer and teacher, he sold his oboe. On the face of it, giving up an instrument you no longer use seems perfectly reasonable, but nevertheless I was taken aback. Marc was not merely an excellent oboist; he was a great artist. Still, Marc didn’t do it alone. He and his oboe did it together. Even in retirement, wouldn’t Marc have some sort of lasting relationship with his oboe that transcended performing on it? Wouldn’t he want to keep it if for no other reason than as a reminder of the magnificent music the two of them had made together?

Joseph Roisman, the distinguished first violinist of the Budapest String Quartet, seemed to be content to give up his beloved Lorenzo Storioni when he agreed to sell it to me after the Quartet retired. But when I finally met with him, he had second thoughts. "Steinhardt," he said to me plaintively, "I’ll sell the violin to you some day, but for now I’m enjoying playing chamber music with my friends every Friday night." And that is exactly what he did until his death a year or two later.

Lifschey and Roisman dealt with retirement in different ways, but their stories made me wonder about not only what I’ll do with my violin if and when I retire, but also about the very nature of a musician’s day-to-day, year-to-year relationship with his instrument.

I began playing violin when I was six years old, and now I’m seventy-six. It has been an integral part of my life for the last seven decades. Does that make the violin my very close friend? Well, yes. Sometimes. The violin obviously can’t speak with words, but when I ask something of it, the instrument can respond with an astonishing range of substance and emotion. This is friendship on a most exalted level.

There are other moments, however, when the violin stubbornly refuses to do my bidding—when it only reluctantly plays in tune, or makes the sound I want, or delivers the music’s essence for which I strive. Then I have to cajole, bargain or adjust to its every whim. Some friend; more like an adversary, you might say.

Or is the violin my partner? A woman once went backstage to congratulate the great violinist Jascha Heifetz after a concert. "What a wonderful sound your violin has, Mr. Heifetz!" she exclaimed. Heifetz leaned over his violin that lay in its open case, listened intently for a moment, and said, "Funny, I don’t hear a thing." My violin also lies mute in its case without me—but, on the other hand, I stand mute on the concert stage without it.