Friends

Dear friends of piano music,

the other day my daughter fell off the slide in kindergarten. That can happen from time to time and is usually not that bad, but she was in pain and was unhappy when I picked her up. A friend accompanied her to the gate, she had a hand on her arm and her face was full of concern and compassion. The little one was probably only three years old, and I found the scene incredibly touching. I couldn't get it out of my mind and I began to think about the phenomenon of friendship. Of course, many others before me have already done this, for example Cicero, who believes that a life without friendship is like a world without sun. Or, to put it even more drastically: "sine amicitia vitam esse nullam" - life is nothing without friendship. Certainly friends can have different status in a person's life, friends can turn out to be "wrong" friends who are not there in an emergency. There are friends who are tied to certain situations, with whom one has work in common, for example, and whom one consequently loses sight of when this common constant no longer applies. Friendships that last a lifetime have probably become very rare, if only because many of us often change our place of residence and the physical distance makes it difficult to maintain friendship. Then there is social media, you can have 5,000 friends on Facebook ..... "Books and friends should be few but good" is a smart saying, even if I think with books that you can have a lot of good books. I spontaneously think of two more quotes on this subject: "Czerny or solitary confinement at the piano", a book I read years ago. And "Pianists are not lonely unless they are not good at being alone." Oh yes, practicing the piano can be a very lonely business, it is an activity that cannot be kept in good company, even the best and closest friends should not be around. Over long stretches it cannot be expected of anyone to listen to the arduous struggle for the perfect interpretation. But the piano should by no means be the pianist's only friend - for him, too, the world would be without the sun.

Kerstin