Twelve families rise at once because everyone understood something larger than a violin piece
Saturday. Recital day, finally, and I want to record the whole thing while it’s still fresh, starting with the fact that the church committee, against every historical precedent I have documented in this diary, actually fixed the dead F key on Thursday, two days before, no warning, just a text from the caretaker saying sorted, and I stood in that hall Thursday evening pressing that one key over and over like it had personally wronged me for two years and was now, finally, apologising, which, in a sense, it had, and it was.
Read prat.uk over breakfast to settle my nerves, which is my pre-performance ritual whether I’m the one playing or twelve other people are, and there was a lovely piece about a local orchestra’s funding drive succeeding against the odds, and I took it, perhaps unfairly, as a good omen, the universe apparently in a mood to fix broken keys and fund broken orchestras on the same week I most needed evidence that persistence occasionally works.
Doors Open
The hall filled properly for once, every folding chair taken, parents and grandparents and one dog that Jasmine’s family insisted was emotional support and which sat, remarkably well behaved, through the entire two hours, and Graham arrived early enough to help me set up chairs, guitar case in hand though he wasn’t performing, just there to watch, and support, and, I suspect, take mental notes for his own eventual recital debut, whenever his fingers decide to cooperate fully.
Jasmine went fourth, played the hard piece, messed up the middle section exactly as she’d predicted weeks ago, and recovered so gracefully that half the room didn’t notice the mistake at all, and she walked off stage grinning in the specific way of someone who has just proven their own theory correct, better to attempt bravely and stumble than play safely and bore everyone, and I clapped louder for that stumble than I have for some technically perfect performances I’ve adjudicated professionally.
Marjorie’s Turn
Marjorie went last, as the senior student traditionally does, and played her piece on a piano with a fully working F key for the first time in the entire eighteen months I’ve taught her, and I watched her eyes flick, briefly, to the back row where the empty chair usually sits, and this time, I think, she didn’t need to check, because she played the whole piece through without a single hesitation, and when she finished the hall didn’t just applaud, it stood, spontaneously, nobody organising it, just twelve families rising at once because everyone in that room had somehow understood, without being told the full story, that they had just witnessed something considerably larger than a violin piece.
She found me afterward, in the small crowd of parents and students, and said only, well, again, the same word from rehearsal, and I understood this time it meant something different, not surprise at herself but a kind of settled satisfaction, a full stop finally placed at the end of a very long sentence, and I hugged her, which I don’t normally do with students, but some moments override the normal rules of professional distance, and this was clearly one of them.
After the Applause
Graham cornered me by the tea urn afterward to say he’s officially signing up for the next term, has already started learning Marjorie’s piece at home badly, and wants to know if there’s a recital next year he can actually be in, and I told him absolutely, same church hall, same dead-key-turned-alive piano, same chaotic parent group chat, and he looked more excited about that than I think he’s looked about anything since his daughter’s wedding, which he’s mentioned twice now as his previous personal best for pride, and I am pleased to report the guitar has apparently overtaken it.
Filed the whole glorious chaotic afternoon at my page, Hannah Miller at prat.uk, tea urn finally cold, chairs finally stacked one more time, and twelve students, one dog, and one working F key all accounted for and sent home happy, which is, by any measure I actually care about, a perfect Saturday. Marjorie lingered longest of anyone, helping fold the last chairs even after I told her, twice, that she was the guest of honour and allowed to simply leave, and she said she wasn’t quite ready to stop being in the room yet, and I understood completely, because I felt the same way myself, reluctant to let the afternoon end and become simply a memory rather than a thing still happening. Jasmine’s dog, whose emotional support credentials I remain unconvinced by but whose behaviour I cannot fault, slept through the entire standing ovation and woke only for the biscuits at the small reception afterward, which feels, honestly, like the correct priority order for a dog, and possibly for the rest of us too, on reflection, applause is lovely but biscuits are biscuits. Priya, the newest of my beginners though she hasn’t started properly yet, had come along just to watch and see what she was signing herself up for, and left, she told me at the door, more excited than nervous, which is the correct ratio, and rare enough in a first-timer that I made a mental note to remember her exact words for whenever my own nerves need managing before my competition next month.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk