'Grand Obsession: A Piano Odyssey' by Perri Knize
BOOK REVIEW
Finding and restoring the right piano becomes a love story.
THERE'S something mysterious about the power of music to move people. It can ambush us in all sorts of places -- in church, in the car, even while we're meandering down the aisle of a supermarket -- infusing us with an overwhelming longing, or a flood of well-being or, best of all, a burst of joy. Readers who have ever been reduced to tears by the sound of a cello or transported by an aria on the radio will understand Perri Knize and her otherwise inexplicable quest for the voice of one particular piano.
The daughter of a professional clarinetist, Knize grew up in a musical household, learning to listen -- to really hear what's happening in a piece of music. When she was old enough to study her own instrument and asked for piano lessons, her father suggested she learn an orchestral instrument instead, since such lessons would be offered free at school. Knize didn't argue and started on the cello -- her father's favorite and the instrument he wished he'd studied -- then switched to the flute, setting aside her piano dreams until her late 20s, when she studied piano for a time at the Mannes College of Music. But she put her lessons aside. ("There were more urgent and pressing demands weighing on me such as food, shelter, and establishing a career.")
At age 42, Knize, now an environmental-policy reporter, decides to again take up the instrument she has loved since childhood. She resumes her lessons and sets out to buy a piano of her own; alas, her discerning ear creates problems. The resulting "piano odyssey" is almost as wide-ranging and nail-biting as Homer's. She spends two years driving and flying across the country to find her piano -- preferably an upright that will fit into her small house in Montana. Her ear tells her immediately whether one is suitable. Some are too "bright" in tone, some are "annoying, brittle," some "lack dimension."
Then she happens upon a Grotrian Cabinet grand: "A soul seems to reside in the belly of this piano, and it reaches out to touch mine, igniting a spark of desire within me that quickly catches fire. This disembodied being is sultry and seductive, as if Marlene Dietrich reincarnated as the soul of this piano, and is using my hands to belt out a torch song."
