Televisions

Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor; Sergei Rachmaninoff, composer; New York Philharmonic; Eugene Ormandy, conducting; Vladimir Horowitz, piano

My sisters and I were part of that last generation to grow up with a black and white television. For a while there, we went through a number of TV’s. When one would go up in smoke, D. and I would look at each other, cross our fingers and hope, and pray, that our next set would show us the world outside South Dakota in glorious color.

Alas, glorious color didn’t arrive in our house until Grandma A. passed away in 1986. We think that Grandma got the very first color TV in the county. We also think that Grandma got the heaviest TV in the county. It was absolutely huge and maintained its heroic physique by ingesting heavily from the feast provided by the electrical current suffused into her house.

I don’t know if Grandma planned this or not, but the family visited a lot more after she got the TV. We came over to watch the Superbowl, we came over to watch movies, we came over to watch Charlie Brown. D. and I even went over one time to play with the color knobs so that we could watch the Beaver eat green peanut butter.

When we cleaned out Grandma’s house after the funeral, Dad arranged it so that we could inherit the color TV. We put it into the southwest corner of the living room. I think that our house settled a little to the southwest after we brought in the TV.

The little black and white TV that our “new” color television replaced ended up in my bedroom – much to the chagrin of my sisters, I suppose. The configuration of our house, along with the aerial position in the attic, the temperature of the water in the cistern, Mercury’s relative position to Venus, the Dow and the location of the squirrel in the tree in the front yard all contributed to an ideal location of the … now, spare … TV on my dresser.

In the late summer of 1982, I was flipping through channels after a day out in the hay field with Dad and I came across the broadcast of the finals of the Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition in Salt Lake City, Utah. I had never heard of this competition. But it appeared intriguing. So, I went downstairs, fixed myself a brown peanut butter sandwich – how lame – and went back to my room to watch the big contest.

The first contestant played Peter Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-Flat Minor. Oh, man, I thought. This guy’s gonna win! Then the second contestant played the Sergei Prokofieff Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Major. Oh, man, I thought. She’s even better than that other guy. She’s gonna win! Then the third contestant approached the piano; this skinny, compact, wet-behind-the-ears, eighteen-year-old piece of fuzz, and he played a piece I had never heard before: Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor.

Have you ever taken a bite of something, and then forgot to swallow? A lump of food that stays lodged between your tongue and the roof of your mouth because you can’t believe what you are seeing or hearing? One of the bites of my PB sandwich became uber-gloop in my mouth for several minutes as I sat riveted by the most breathtaking display of musical and technical fireworks, pianistic wizardry and pageantry I had ever seen … and heard. I knew, in the moments following this forty-five minute spectacular, while I sat applauding and weeping in my room, for both Mr. Rachmaninoff and this little urchin in a tux at the piano, that my life would never be the same. I had heard the finest piece ever written.

Sergei Rachmaninoff completed this most difficult of all of his piano and orchestra works in September of 1909 at his country estate, called Ivanovka, in Russia. He often said that he “wrote it for elephants”; hint: he wrote it for pianists with elephantine technique. The work has been known to instill fear into many pianists, including the dedicatee, Josef Hofmann. Pianist Gary Graffman has been heard to lament his not having learned it when he was younger, when he was “still too young to know fear.”

As God is my witness, I yelled after making sure that only God was hearing me, I WILL learn this piano concerto. The next day, I went to the Brookings Public Library to see if they had a recording of this behemoth. Pianist Andre Watts had recorded this musical reincarnation of Goliath with the New York Philharmonic and I about wore out the LP from the number of times I played it before having to take it back. After letting the masterwork fester in my ears for a few years, I summoned the courage – stupidity? – to order the sheet music. During the summer of 1985, I learned it. It took me four months to learn it, memorize it and play it.

I don’t think I endeavored to learn this piece from the standpoint of a challenge … or to show off. It certainly was a challenge … but, believe it or not, … I don’t consider difficulty when choosing or dismissing a piece to tackle. I listen to the whole piece in order to evaluate its musical merits and its potential match to my musical personality; and to see if I like it.

I have performed Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 two times, but neither time with an orchestra. I had a brave second pianist sitting at a second piano representing two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, snare drum, cymbals, double basses, cellos, violas and violins. It was a thrilling experience each time.

Why did I learn it? I liked it. And it was an accomplishment. It hangs on my figurative wall of achievement – along with my performance of the Prokofieff Piano Concerto No. 3 in C Major – and the day Dad and I stacked thirteen wagonloads of hay bales – and my well-earned B in high school biology – and the day that my Brookings High School freshman and sophomore boys vocal ensemble earned a superior plus at solo and ensemble contest – and the day we saved a batch of kittens from certain death after their mother had died – and the year I ran the Marine Corps Marathon – and the year that I wrote a blog …

Credits: To Vladimir Horowitz, the last of the romantic pianists. Thank you for your pianism, your excellence and your music.

This is the forty-fourth of my final forty-five CD’s.