The Boston Moves To Boston
As a 10 year old I dreamt about the day I would live in a tiny studio apartment, preferably in Paris, with my 9 foot Steinway piano. I intended to sleep under the piano and eat on top of the piano to conserve space in my artistic flat. Although my current tastes are decidedly less Bohemian, the heart of my home has always centered around the piano. Even if I’m not practicing, I feel uncomfortable unless the piano is always open and ready for me to play anytime a melody floats through my head.
I threw the last of two temper tantrums in my life when I was around 13 years old. The first tantrum as a two-year old was when I demanded to learn to read and the second was when I insisted I couldn’t practice anymore without a new piano. I originally studied on a Flemish harpsichord from age 2 until I ran out of notes during a Clementi Sonatina around age 7. (The largest harpsichords typically have around five octaves while pianos have seven octaves so eventually I wasn’t able to play repertoire written for a piano with a larger range.) My parents found an old spinet in a friend’s basement complete with beer ring stains on the lid and it was delivered in the back of a pick-up truck. However, a Spinet has a very limited action and dynamic range and I was struggling to play on grand pianos any time I went to a lesson, performed, or competed. There was no question in my mind that I had to have a Steinway piano.
I spent so much time at the Steinway dealer trying out every piano for weeks that they jokingly offered me an office corner to make my commute easier. With a home equity loan and friends and family around the world financially pitching in, I finally decided on a Boston Model A, 5 ft. 1 inch grand piano. It was probably a coincidence that I was also exactly 5 ft. 1 inch at the time and my Dad always told me that dynamite comes in small packages. After the piano was delivered, my mother called my grandmother and informed her that AnnaLotte’s baby had just arrived and congratulated her on becoming a Great Grandmother. (Cue intense teenage embarrassment and an extremely panicked grandmother.)
While my relationship status with the Boston piano has had its inevitable highs and lows, it has brought me competitions, festivals, and concerts on both sides of the Atlantic ocean and, most recently, up to Boston as I prepare to begin graduate school at Boston Conservatory. I first visited Boston five years ago during a ballroom competition at MIT with the Princeton Ballroom Team and it has been a dream of mine to live here ever since. I couldn’t have moved to Boston without spending hundreds of hours on my baby Boston practicing for my graduate audition.
Transporting this size of piano requires far more than the back of a pick-up truck and I always watch the moving process with as much trepidation as a mother watching a baby walk a tightrope. Baby grand pianos are transported by carefully laying the piano down on its side and removing the legs and pedals before it is swaddled in thick blankets. Piano movers typically charge per stair and I gulped when I realized how many stairs I have leading up to the porch. Luckily I have a first floor condo and I expected the piano to be rolled up a ramp to the porch. Instead, my 500 pound (226 kg) piano was placed on a board and pushed up a 45 degree inclined “red carpet” by only two movers.
A piano has to settle for about 2 weeks before tuning so I have been letting the piano acclimate in the bay windows in peace. It is so horribly out of tune that I haven’t played it except to improvise a few times when the light coming in was too gorgeous to ignore. Instead I have been hanging pictures of art work I have picked up in various countries I have visited for piano study or performance thanks to help of my Boston piano. I’m often a bit sad I’m not traveling as usual during the summer but this has been a new adventure of finding a home. The piano movers told me they will never move the piano out again, (this is second time I’ve moved the piano in a year) so I think I’ll be staying in this house for at least a few years.
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