My piano technique is getting a little better, I think. I learned to play piano on our beat-up, difficult-to-tune Chickering, with carved floral decoration. Some of the keys had cigarette burns or missing ivories or both. I took lessons with Mrs. Trebert, who explained to me that her name was unusual because it was the same backward and forward. Bach would have liked her name: it was a backward canon at the unison. It was her husband’s name, actually. He was very sick and pale and quiet. He sat in a warm, dark room while Mrs. Trebert listened to me play Bach and Béla Bartók. My favorite piece was by Bartók, in A minor. The left hand went back and forth between two notes, an A and an E, and the right hand played something equally uncomplicated. Béla Bartók was a Hungarian composer who was hired by Koussevitzky to write a piece for orchestra that has a gigantic solo for three bassoons. When Bartók was in Europe he wrote dissonant, despairing pieces, but for Koussevitzky he wrote something sunny and accessible and immortal.
What do You think about Traveling Sprinkler (2013)?
