This intimate and idiosyncratic history of the piano and a view into the secret heart of Paris life is written by an American expatriate, who details his attempts to gain entry into a piano shop where locals gathered to discuss music, love, and life.
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This intimate and idiosyncratic history of the piano and a view into the secret heart of Paris life is written by an American expatriate, who details his attempts to gain entry into a piano shop where locals gathered to discuss music, love, and life.
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In Thad Carhart's engaging memoir, "The Piano Shop on the Left Bank" (2001), Carhart, an American writer who lives in Paris, describes how his love for the piano was rekindled upon finding a quaint piano repair shop in Paris and its eccentric owner, Luc. At one point after Carhart purchases a used piano from Luc, a baby grand made by a defunct manufacturer called Stingl, Carhart learns that he needs to make a repair to the instrument's pedal mechanism. Luc encourages Carhart to do the repair himself and instructs him how. When the repair is not fully successful and Carhart returns to Luc for more advice, Luc delivers the line that is the title of this review. In the double-entendre, Luc was reminding his customer of the need to avoid too much tension in the pedal mechanism if it is to work properly. But the advice, and the words "play", "soul" and "machine" are at the heart of this book and speak volumes about the piano and about music. How has a large, heavy and clumsy instrument become the way to capture music, beauty and passion in the hearts of many pianists and music-lovers?
Carhart's story begins when he chances upon the piano shop and makes the acquaintance of its owners. He soon decides to take up the piano again, which he had studied as a child years before, and purchases the used Stingl baby grand. We learn a great deal about the author, about Luc and his circle, and about Paris and its customs as the Carhart's story unfolds.
But mostly we learn about the piano and its magic and about music. There are chapters in the book where the author recollects his youthful music lessons and the piano teachers he finds in Paris after beginning to play again. There are fascinating chapters involving the manufacture and tuning of the instrument, the way the mechanism works, and lore about past and present manufacturers of the piano in France, the United States, Germany, Japan, and elsewhere. An excellent chapter near the end of the book describes the manufacture of the Fazoli piano, probably the most expensive and best piano now made, in Italy. Carhart describes the schola cantorum, a small private music school in Paris where Claude Debussy once taught and where the author enrolled his children for music lessons. During one of the most enjoyable scenes of the book, an elderly tradesman at Luc's shop sits at the keyboard and enthralls his listeners with the performance of a Scarlatti sonata. In addition to Luc and Carhart, a host of characters come to life, including the alcoholic tuner Jos, Luc's ladyfriend, Mathilde, Carhart's teacher Anna, and the pianists Gygory Sebok and Peter Feuchtwangler who appear in the book as leaders of master classes. Luc himself, part hard-headed businessman and part lover of the piano, falls in love successively with many of the instruments that come through his shop, Steinways, Erards, Pleyels, Gaveaus, and others. As Luc evocatively says at the end of the book, "You can never have too many dream pianos".
I studied piano as a child, stopped during college and law school, and returned to the instrument when I went out on my own. I haven't left it since then. I took lessons for an initial few years and then, regrettably, have tried to learn the instrument by myself. The piano has meant a great deal to me over the years.
This book will appeal to any serious student of the piano or to lovers of the inexhaustible literature of the instrument. The book will also make a wonderful and unusual gift to those on your list who love or who work with the piano.
