A Romance on Three Legs

A few blogs back I was extolling the virtues of the Yamaha Disklavier, a traditional acoustic grand piano with built in digital electronics for recording and instant auto playback. When I wrote the blog I’d just attended a workshop on the incredible piano at Tom Lee Music in Vancouver. I was intrigued by the musical possibilities offered by connecting the instrument to a computer and the Internet. 

Reporting back to my wife Pat, we began toying with the idea and crunching the dollar numbers it would take to acquire one for her studio. Lately we’d been worried about the condition of our Steinway Grand after decades of heavy use. The piano seemed to be losing its tonal sonority. We purchased the 1924-built instrument in the 1960’s from Eaton’s, at that time the exclusive Steinway dealer for all of Canada. The thought of now using it as a trade-in (on even a high-end Asian-built instrument) was not a welcome thought.

For those readers who don’t know keyboard instruments, a Steinway Grand is considered the Mercedes of pianos. According to Forbes.com, a “Steinway piano...is a singularly inspired investment -- an instrument that combines the joy of musical perfection with the security and reassurance of financial appreciation. It is, quite simply, a treasured possession that grows in value over the course of time. Over the past ten years, the retail value of a Steinway concert grand has appreciated nearly 200%.” 

At Tom Lee’s Music in Vancouver I spoke with one of the keyboard consultants and asked whom they employed to service the pianos they sold on Vancouver Island. He mentioned a piano technician who had worked for the Vancouver store and was now retired in Nanaimo. He has continued covering the store’s island sales. I phoned the technician the following day and discovered he’d had training at the Steinway factory in New York. Talk about luck. Agreeing to have a look at our Steinway, he spent 6 hours working on our piano and, although there is still some work to be done, has literally brought the instrument back to life. Our treasured Steinway as far as we’re concerned is not going anywhere.  

Packing up his tools, the technician mentioned a book he was reading entitled A Romance on Three Legs.  Finding a copy at Chapters the following day, I haven’t been able to lay it down. Written by New York Times correspondent Katie Hafner, the book is a detailed account of the compulsive search for a sensitive, highly responsive concert piano by Canadian musical wunderkind Glenn Gould. Presented is a fascinating biography of Gould who was known for many quirks, including the wearing of winter clothing in the middle of summer. 

I can verify this as fact, having seen the unapproachable Gould wandering Stanley Park’s seawall in July of 1958 wrapped in a heavy overcoat, a rakish cap perched atop his head and wearing a pair of wool gloves without fingers. Stopping periodically, Gould would begin sweeping his arms skyward as if he were conducting an invisible symphony orchestra. I was in Vancouver attending the 1^st Vancouver International Festival. I had tickets for a play (Lister Sinclair's The World of the Wonderful Dark), the French mime artist Marcel Marceau, and the Oscar Peterson Trio. Having not yet met my soul mate Pat, my love of classical music still lay dormant and I skipped attending the festival recital by Glenn Gould, an opportunity that I now regret. In 1964 Gould suddenly, at the peak of his career, gave up the concert stage forever in favor of the recording studio. 

A Romance on Three Legs focuses on Gould's love for a particular piano, a Steinway concert grand known as CD318 (C, meaning for the use of Steinway Concert Artists only, and D, denoting it as the largest that Steinway built). Hafner’s narrative follows the piano from the day it was born on Steinway’s New York factory floor in 1942 through to the moment of discovery by Gould in Eaton’s Toronto Store in 1960. Used for many of Gould’s best recordings in subsequent years, the piano was unfortunately dropped by movers while in transport between Cleveland and Toronto after a cancelled recording session Gould was to do with the Cleveland Symphony. Throughout his life Gould was notorious for cancelling out on contracts. Understandably it kept his lawyer very busy.

Readers are introduced to the world and art of piano restoration and tuning, including a central character in Gould's life, the blind technician Verne Edquist who lovingly attended to the pianist’s favorite Steinway for more than two decades. Well documented are the attempts by Edquist, the Steinway factory and others to restore the piano after the moving accident to Gould’s high technical expectations. After Glenn Gould’s passing in 1982, the piano was sent along with all his personal possessions to the National Library of Canada in Ottawa. Recitals are still performed on the Steinway including pianists playing at the city’s annual International Jazz Festival. Those who play the instrument say it’s the finest piano they’ve ever performed on. 

Early in our married life I recall Pat often playing a 1955 12-inch LP of Glenn Gould performing Bach’s Goldberg Variations, the recording that skyrocketed the Canadian pianist to international fame. It would become the most popular classical solo-instrumental album ever, selling an astonishing 1.8 million copies. Reading Katie Hafner’s book I realized I’d not given an intensive listen to the recording since. Downloading from itunes the Goldberg Variations version that Gould re-recorded in 1981, I’m listening to the album on my Apple computer as I finish this blog. Through earphones Gould’s eccentric habit of humming along as he played can clearly be heard. 

    PHOTO: A corner of the Steinway Piano Floor at Tom Lee Music in Vancouver