The Piano Teacher: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

year, Erika manages to wrest a Clementi sonata from one or two students, while others still grunt and root about in Czerny’s elementary études. These students are then discarded after the intermediary examination, because they can’t find the wheat and they can’t find the chaff, even though their parents are firmly convinced that their children will soon feast on nectar and ambrosia.
    Erika’s mixed joys are the good advanced students, who make an effort. She can wrest all sorts of things from them: Schubert sonatas, Schumann’s
Kreisleriana,
Beethoven sonatas, those high points in the life of a piano student. The work tool, a Bösendorfer, excretes an intricate blend. And next to it stands the teacher’s Bösendorfer, which only Erika can play, unless two students are practicing a piece for two pianos.
    After three years, the piano student has to enter the next level; to do so, he must pass an exam. Most of the work for this exam is assigned to Erika; she has to take the idling student engine and step on the gas, slam down hard in order to rev it up. Sometimes the engine doesn’t really catch, it would rather be doing something else, something that has little to do with music—for instance, pouring melodious words into a girl’s ear. Erika doesn’t care for such behavior; she tries to stop it whenever she can. Often, before an exam, Erika sermonizes: Fluffing a note, she says, isn’t as bad as rendering a piece in the wrong spirit, a spirit that does not do justice to it. She is preaching to deaf ears, which have been closed by fear. For many of her students, music means climbing from the depths of the working class to the heights of artistic cleanliness. Later on, they too will become piano teachers. They are afraid that when they play at the examination, their sweaty, fear-filled fingers, driven by a swifter pulse beat, will slip to the wrong keys. Erika cantalk a blue streak about interpretation, but the only thing the students wish to do is play the piece correctly to the end.
    Erika likes thinking about Walter Klemmer, a nice-looking blond boy, who lately has been the first to show up in the morning and the last to leave in the evening. A busy beaver, Erika must admit. He is a student at the Engineering Academy, where he is learning all about electricity and its beneficial features. Recently he has been listening to all the music students, from the first hesitant picking and pecking to the final crack of Chopin’s Fantasy in F Minor, Op. 49. He seems to have a lot of time on his hands, which is rather unlikely for a student in the final phase of his studies. One day, Erika asks him whether he wouldn’t rather practice Schönberg, instead of lounging around so unproductively. Doesn’t he have any studying to do? No lectures, no drills, nothing? He says he’s on his semester break, which hadn’t occurred to Erika, although she teaches so many students. Vacation at the music academy doesn’t coincide with vacation at the university. Strictly speaking, there are no holidays for art; art pursues you everywhere, and that’s just fine with the artist.
    Erika is surprised: How come you always show up here so early, Herr Klemmer? If a student is working on Schönberg’s 33b, as you are, he can’t possibly be interested in minor frivolities. So why do you listen to the others? The hardworking student lies. He says you can profit from anything and everything, no matter how little it may be. You can learn a lesson from just about anything, says this con man, who has nothing better to do. He claims he can get something from even the least of his brothers, so long as he remains curious and thirsty for knowledge. Except that you have to overcome those minor things in order to get further. A student can’t stay with the losers, otherwise his superiors will interfere.
    Besides, the young man likes listening to his teacher perform, even if it’s just singsong, tralala, or the B major scale. Don’t start