Kalynn Fleischman: The Sprite

Dear friends of piano music,

the other day would have been one of the darkest days of my life by a hair - my piano, my beloved piano, one of my best friends, so to speak, suddenly and unexpectedly broke down. Without any warning, the g of the middle octave no longer made a sound, and unfortunately that's how it would stay. I tried to make another recording, but it was really a tragedy., the sound impression was distantly reminiscent of a knitted jumper, knitted with much love and effort by one's favourite deceased grandmother, thus possessing a high sentimental value, which has fallen victim to the appetite of malicious moths. Now, of course, one could argue that it is typically German doom and gloom to moan about a single piano key that does not work, while all the other 87 are perfectly fine. And tragedy, well really, to get so theatrical - I remember a lecture by a Heidelberg lawyer and brilliant city guide who recalled a plane crash in the 1980s that killed half the Classics seminar during his excursion - this, he said, could "almost" be called a tragedy. I admit that if he was right in his (for me a little questionable) classification, then in order to maintain proportionality I have to row back a little. However, one must know the following: The g of the middle octave occurs constantly in just about every piano piece, often in a prominent position - why should one listen to such a distorted, indeed mutilated, piece of music? I can't play John Cage every week, can I? But the real problem is the semiconductors that are used all over the world for mobile phones, computers, cars, all kinds of electronics, and unfortunately also for Clavinovas, like the one I need so that I can practise at night without waking up the whole street. They are in extremely short supply at the moment, due to the pandemic as well as the fact that a lot of people in the lockdown have bought an electronic piano to counteract boredom and loneliness by playing the piano. So if you order a Clavinova now, you won't get one until October at the earliest - provided there are enough semiconductors........You can imagine my despair: No Youtube recordings until October, no piano playing without perforated sounds until October. What can I say? Life without a piano is possible, I know that, I've heard about it, but unfortunately for me it's completely pointless. What am I supposed to do until October, I thought? Especially as my job as a teacher is once again going nowhere - I love school, but quite obviously it doesn't love me. I could knit jumpers and feed them to the moths. I could learn the phone book by heart and then poison the pigeons in the park (that's a joke, for those who don't know Georg Kreisler.....). I could try to finally learn to cook properly, which I had actually given up on recently. Find out in life what you can't do, and then don't do it......after all, I have tried persistently for several years without any success, obviously I am completely talentless. No, it really all made no sense, so I phoned around for a while with growing frustration until the miracle happened: I found the wonderful Pianohaus Fritsch in Heppenheim an der Bergstraße, which still had exactly one Clavinova in stock and brought it to me, I'm not joking now, this morning, on a Sunday. Hallelujah, I am saved, fate had mercy on me.

Kerstin