Dortmund

Dear friends of piano music,

Dortmund is really not a beautiful city. I can say that because I grew up there. At least almost, in a smaller village on the outskirts. But I was in Dortmund in the sports club, I had cello lessons there, and I also studied piano there for a while. The city can't help the fact that after the Second World War there was really a lot of space for so-called "post-war architecture", there are only a few reminiscent of old times who seem strangely lost there. Dortmund is a city in the Ruhr area, characterized by open-cast mining, hard, dirty work deep underground, that used to earn one's daily bread here. It is my home, which I love of course, even if it is ugly. When Igor Levit came to Germany with his family at the age of eight, they first lived in Dortmund, where he also went to school. I only recently read this by chance, for me personally it adds an incredible value to my city, I imagine whether we might have run into each other by chance, without knowing that we have one thing in common: Our lives are turning more or less about the piano. After a few years, Igor Levit moved to Hanover, continued to school there until - and that really shook me - he dropped out of school. So one of the brightest and most intellectual pianists I know is a school dropout. What a shock. Nobody drops out of school without further ado, because even a world-class pianist does not know as a child whether he will one day be dependent on his school leaving certificate if, for whatever reason, his career does not work out. What do you do without a school leaving certificate? As a rule, you have to put shelves or something similar, a useful and stupid occupation that nobody likes to do, not even a failed concert pianist. What is going wrong at school so that someone who is so cosmopolitan and inquisitive, who thinks so independently and intelligently, who interferes politically and is involved, no longer sees any point in going to school? I really didn't like going to school myself, I was often terribly bored there and therefore secretly read a good book under the table - you have to know how to help yourself, because I would definitely have lacked the courage to drop out of school. Or despair - I endured it, life isn't always fun, at least that's what I learned at school. I really enjoy being a teacher because then it's up to me whether it gets boring or not. But what if I had a student like Igor Levit in front of me? He just didn't feel like he was being seen in school and had very bad grades, even had to repeat a class. And that with his incredible intelligence. Sure, it didn't do him any harm, he grew up with the resistance, I think, but we don't want to credit that as a credit to the school. It is not always easy to do justice to every student, but, as a teacher, wouldn't I really notice when I have a brilliantly gifted child in front of me who needs special encouragement and communication? I hope I would do better, I really hope so.

Kerstin