The Depth of Sound

Nocturne by Shaverzashvili, a deep, dramatic piece written by Georgian composer on her  sister’s death, was my favorite part of my final exam program in music school. Perhaps, it was especially meaningful for me because my piano teacher was also emotional and spirited Georgian woman. She didn’t know limits in her work; she always gave the whole her energy, all her feelings, and all her physical forces to her students. She easily switched from words of the highest praise to killing criticism; she didn’t accept any other grades except A+ (written in my school record with the red pen) and D- (written with the black pen). She used to call me “princess” when I was playing well (which meant just fantastically) and “blockhead” when I didn’t sound emotively enough. I remember classes when I left the study room and locked myself in the bathroom where no one could see me to have a good cry. She was the best Teacher in my life; she was the person who taught me to work, to achieve any goals however unfeasible they seem to be; she was the person who taught me to feel and to express my feelings through sounds of music.

In whole my life I’ve seen her crying only twice and these moments were one of the most shocking for me. First time it was my final exam. There was a huge, empty concert hall with only three professors sitting somewhere in the darkness far from the stage and listening to me. But I wasn’t playing for them; I was playing for a fourth person in this darkness who, I knew, was following every tiny movement of my fingers. I was playing for my teacher, and there was nothing more essential in the world than this opportunity to prove that I deserved her love. I played an etude, a sonata, a fugue and finished my program with Nocturne. When I was leaving the stage, my hands were shaking of inside tension. I threw a look at her and noticed tears in her eyes. She didn’t say anything, she just hugged me and it was the greatest award I’ve ever had in my life.

Today, almost ten years later, I’m trying to play this Nocturne again. It starts with long repeated F resembling a funeral knell. It took me hours and hours of exhausting practicing to find the right sounding of this simple note. My teacher was always discontented with the way I played it – it was too superficial, not profound enough. Once she asked me to imagine heavy drops of honey falling slowly one by one in a big bowl already full of golden honey. That day in the empty unlit concert hall I closed my eyes and imagined these ponderous drops dying somewhere in the depth of composer’s pain, of my teacher’s pain, of my pain.

Today, almost ten years later, I closed my eyes, I imagined honey drops falling into a deep bowl, and I pressed the key. All that I heard was my long, ruddy nail tapping the key. My teacher never allowed me to color my nails and always made me cut them very short because they prevented close connection between fingers and keys. So as soon as I graduated from music school I started growing and coloring my nails. And I stopped playing piano.

The second time when I saw my teacher’s tears was from train window. I was leaving my native city to enter Moscow State University, to start a new life with adult responsibilities, duties and temptations of a big city. Since then I’ve changed a lot of places, jobs, homes, boyfriends and friends. But today sitting in front of this electronic piano I still need someone to tell me what I should imagine to find the way to the depth of my heart. I need someone to teach me how to feel for real again.