Christopher Kondrich
from Canto Fermo
regarding the choice of piano
What was disappointing
was not that the recital
was over, but that Tim
hadn’t chosen the right
piano, he immediately
expressed his concern
over his piano choice,
but I told him the piano
hadn’t been in use,
it had just sat there,
but he said that that
was precisely the reason
why the right piano
had to be chosen to sit
beside us the whole time,
its immobility was itself
a great accompaniment—
that the right piano
wasn’t chosen was a
blackness that shrouded us,
a woolen pall, he said
with a few beads of sweat
dotting the corners of
his face. You have to choose
the right piano for
the right composer,
in this case we are
the composers, so the piano
shouldn’t have been
a Steinway, it is clear
in my mind that Steinway
was the obvious but not
correct choice, with its
responsiveness to major
concertos, to Bach, but
not to us, we should’ve
gone with a Bösendorfer
or something more inclined
to our condition, more
like the condition of our
shadows. I want to return
to when the choice
of piano was before me,
but I’m not sure if
choosing the right piano
was something we
could ever do.
If I chose the Bösendorfer,
I would now be saying
that the Steinway was
the obvious choice,
that I was a fool
to pass up what was
clearly the optimal piano—
this is the real problem,
now we are getting
at the real issue …
I don’t play the piano
for its repertoire,
I play for its closeness—
the music is always
so close to my hands,
I can feel the sounds
between my hands
as I clasp them to play.
Tim was silent after this
and put his hat on,
but he didn’t leave,
he sat near the window
overlooking the field,
slouched in a chair
and fiddling with the
buttons on his coat.
I couldn’t dawdle.
I had a few things
I wanted to do before
the day was over.
I was always so adamant
that I perform certain duties,
I couldn’t finish
the day and move
onto the next one
until these minor tasks
were completed and
I had checked them
off my mental list,
my aria, which,
in its reoccurrence,
brings melody to me
on its schedule, the sound
of my absence, of all
absence, as I check
off, item by item,
what anchors me
to this world—
I think Kant played
a Schimmel, Tim piped up,
perhaps we were led
astray by our inclinations
towards a Bösendorfer
or Steinway when our
real answer was a
Schimmel all along,
but I detest the Schimmel
with its indeterminateness
and squeaking wheels.
I remember the one
Schimmel I played
when I was a child—
it kept shifting
when I struck the keys.
I was told I was
frustrating the instrument
with pent up suffering.
I was an emotional child,
crying at every turn,
and my hands were
such an extension of this
emotion that when
I frustrated the instrument,
as I was told, the wheels
squeaked with its movement,
which is why, in this case,
I was so immediately
deterred by the Schimmel
that I gravitated towards
the Steinway and Bösendorfer
and swung between them
for a few hours.
I didn’t have the heart
to tell him, to remind him
that, in Beethoven’s time,
in Vienna, there were
more than one
hundred piano makers,
each with their own
inclination towards
one sound or another,
so the choice could’ve
been even harder,
the sheer number
of pianos would’ve
made choosing one
an impossibility.
I didn’t have the heart
to say that our choice
was simple by comparison,
the choice between
Steinway or Bösendorfer
was as clear a decision
as we were ever
going to have—
if we cannot choose
between a Steinway
or Bösendorfer, how
will we ever choose
anything else? This
is the path we create,
the one that pieces
us together into one man
or another, the one
with the recollection
of choosing the piano,
or the one fixing his
pant leg, shaking it
to get the creases out
like nothing had ever
happened or ever will.
Christopher Kondrich is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Denver. Other selections from Canto Fermo have appeared in Meridian, Boston Review, Notre Dame Review, and The Journal.