It's called playing, but it's not a game

The life-changing effect of bringing a battered old upright into a home

Today I played my piano for the last time. It’s a honky-tonk, straight strung upright, made by the London piano firm Nathaniel Berry upright in 1920s, and my ex-husband casually bought it for me thirty years ago, almost as a joke. It’s the sort of thing you do in life, when everything is ahead and you don’t care about pensions. Or storage. We were newly-weds, having a big party and we knew a fabulous pianist who suggested he come along and play. Only we had no piano.

So the Berry was bought, very cheaply. After the party and the hangovers subsided, we were left with this piano. It couldn’t exist as a piece of furniture on which to put stuff. It needed to be played, so I found a local teacher. I remember walking to my first lesson, which was on the day of Princess Diana’s funeral. London was silent and empty. I hadn’t played a piano since the age of 12, but I knew the basics.

Hence I started a journey into the world of Bach, Debussy, and Mozart, of scales and those strange exercises by Charles-Louis Hanon, which make me think of a piece of knitting, connected and never ending. I learned what it was like to be inside a piece of music. Playing something is a totally different experience to that of listening to it. My pieces were very easy, but my teacher gave me wonderful compositions to play, and I got to know them as if getting to know a person with its own character and chiaroscuro. Even now, when I hear one on the radio or in the concert hall, it connects with me, like an old friend. The easy bits do, at least.

Life continued; a crazy, busy life as BBC Arts Correspondent and newspaper hack. I had one child, then two, then three, then four. I carried on playing the piano. The picture below summarises what this meant in reality. I’m wearing a cocktail dress (for some reason), and smiling; a tiny dimpled hand in a pyjama top is pulling at my back, trying to get my attention.

I kept at it; I eventually passed Grade Five. Huge excitement. The world was my piano oyster. By this time I was Arts Editor at the New Statesman. One year I wrote about Lucy Parham’s Celebrity Christmas Gala, a returning event in which notable people who were keen pianists, including Ed Balls and Katie Derham, played the Steinways at King’s Place in front of a paying audience. It looked quite easy. “Would you like to do this next year?” Parham kindly asked. Ever up for leaving my comfort zone (see also: jumping out of planes, running marathons, having four children), I signed.

It was not fun. It was not easy. It was horrendous. I hadn’t practiced my piece enough (from Tchaikovsky’s Album For The Young) I was amongst piano virtuosi such as Clemency Burton-Hill, Myleene Klass and Alistair McGowan and I was way, way out of my depth. In the terrible moment of public performance, I experienced what I can only describe as a sort of out-of-body sensation where my hands were on the keyboard, my eyes were on the ceiling and my mind was in the auditorium. I also discovered I had no idea how to finish the piece. I actually had to stop and start again. Still, I felt alive as I was doing it.

I am DYING here, on stage at King’s Place

Others were now in the frame. Crucially, my children were at a state primary which put music firmly in the centre of its curriculum. Everyone was in the choir. There was a wind band. There was an orchestra. My two daughters started learning the piano, cruising through their grades. Music became central to our home. My sons started playing too; violin for one, trumpet for the other (plus guitar). If you live in central London you can’t really run around your garden. You can however, learn to play music. I salute primary schools who uphold music and the teachers who bring it alive to the children. Here is the then music teacher of my children’s primary, plus the head (a classically trained violinist), at an impromptu concert on Islington Green. Music was normalised at this school; it was also perceived as cool and fun.

Making music central: Roger (on keyboards) and Amanda (the head), Hanover School 2008

As the adults do; so shall the children. This photograph of my children is from a piece in the FT, about the power of music in the lives of young people. Of course, they are all gathered around the Berry.

The instrument that started it all…a honky tonk upright piano

When my daughters got reached the high altitude (Grade 6 and above), their teacher gently suggested the Berry be upgraded. I had done a huge piece of written work for the gallerist (and semi-professional pianist) Matthew Flowers, so with the proceeds I bought a second hand Yamaha U3. This is known as the workhorse of pianos, an upright with a typically loud and beautiful tone beloved by conservatoires, professionals and concert halls. The beloved Berry was mothballed.

My children went on. Two got music scholarships to their state secondaries. They all played in their school orchestras. They all achieved Grade 8, in a variety of instruments including voice. One, aged 9, won a Clive Gillinson Strings Bursary from the LSO and now 25, is studying for his Diploma on the violin. One sings with Edinburgh University Chamber Choir. One took his trumpet on a school band tour across Europe.

It is not too far-fetched to suggest that the cheap and cheerful Berry, my original honky-tonk upright, was the catalyst. With it, plus a powerful encouragement from state schools both primary and secondary, my children have been given a ticket to live their lives connected to music.

And so it is only fair that the Berry is silent no longer. I put it on the local What’s App group and tomorrow morning a neighbour is coming to collect it. He has young children, and they are learning to play. I am overcome with nostalgia for days sitting beside my battered, dark brown companion with its remorselessly bright tone, taking my daughters through their scales, using a toy owl to illustrate how while major might be optimistic, the minor key always sounds a bit scary. But I am delighted that new sets of small hands will start picking, and then hopefully flowing, across its worn keys. Furthermore, this family happens to have the surname of Chopin. It was meant to be.