The Secret Pianist

Mozart’s Piano Sonata in A minor forced its way into my flat one evening. The sound waves came from a neighbour, who played with a light, almost nonchalant touch. At first I was irritated by the intrusion, but after a few bars I realised that the player had considerable talent, though clearly not classically trained, perhaps a jazz musician or an autodidact. Maybe that was why I found the music so moving.

There was a true originality in it, with the fingertips landing on the keys with languid timing, in a just-in-time manner, before they slid off the piano like tears. Other passages were played boldly, with a childlike energy, as though the piece were being played for the very first time. Whether it was beginner’s luck or genius was hard to say, as was the age and gender of the pianist. They might just as easily have been a twenty-year-old with a spirit of discovery as a retired musician who had given up on rules.

I listened every evening. It soon became a ritual, with chamomile tea in a porcelain cup, a soft blanket, and the music, that sweet, flowing music, so imprecisely precise, with missed notes and clumsy slips between the keys, but that was part of it. The music had life, it swept into my daily existence and enriched my soul.

Before long, I found myself looking at my neighbours in the stairwell in a new light, trying to work out which of them might be the divinely gifted pianist. The lady with permed hair? The sprightly, round fellow? The child always chatting on a mobile? I began watching their fingers after a while, as their faces offered no clues, searching for slender feelers, perhaps slightly angular knuckles and joints, but everything about my neighbours spoke of ordinariness. No one seemed capable of playing in that almost-paralysed manner, always just a little too late but still on time. An anticipation arose between each keystroke, as the music was woven through the air by this virtuoso who, each evening, seemed to make a confession to the rest of us.

A friend with an orchestral background came to visit, to help me put together some sort of phantom profile, drawing on her knowledge of pianists. She was nearly as impressed as I was, though the occasional wrong notes bothered her, and after half an hour of listening she said it was probably someone who had never performed in front of others, an unpolished pianist. Probably a little older, she added, as younger players would already have had their quirks smoothed away. I thanked her for the insight. As she left for the evening, she said, Why not just ask around? I began to breathe heavily and said nothing, mumbling vaguely to suggest that such things weren’t easy for me. Then put up a note? she suggested. A mad idea. How would I appear to the others?

Still, I agonised over the wording, which I pinned to the noticeboard: a rambling message about my slender Hoffman piano designed by Carl Malmsten (I’d realised it was something special after a previous visitor had tried to exchange their concert grand for it), and I asked whether anyone in the building might like to use it, as I myself did not play and its tuning was beginning to drift. I thought that a talented pianist wouldn’t pass up such an opportunity, and each evening I awaited an unexpected visit from my musical benefactor, who would make a very modest entrance, approaching my instrument with gentle steps, sitting down on the stool and slowly unfolding their fingers, before placing them on the keys — each stroke a little heavier than usual, as I had come to understand — and they would appreciate that the instrument had a bit of temperament, that it resisted slightly while being filled with the sound waves which stirred all my emotions. But no visitor ever came.

Instead, the music fell silent and never returned. I remember it now, many years later, as one remembers a particular taste or a moment of euphoria, in a precise place in the mind to which I can always turn when life feels petty and meaningless, when every particle in the air could, in fact, be imbued with spirit.