Playing Piano... Again

An upright piano ready to be played and it was a fun hour that whizzed by

The apartment building I live in has a clubhouse with a variety of facilities, such as a swimming pool, gym, classes for baking and making crafts, tai chi and so on.

In order to entice more residents to use the facilities, today was a day to try things out for free and booked in advance, though things like the swimming pool and gym were first come, first served.

Not having played piano for over 20 years, I thought this would be a good chance to see if my fingers still had the magic touch on the ivories and reserved myself a room for an hour.

I printed off some sheet music from the internet and then headed to the clubhouse at the appointed time. I was shown to a small room that had an upright piano and two chairs; a clock was right above the piano so there was no mistaking what time it was.

I got out my first piece, Minuet in G by JS Bach and started playing the right hand, trying to remember how to read sheet music, and then ventured to add the left hand and presto -- I was playing music!

It was very rough at first and immediately after playing at the end, I started the beginning again, hoping it would get better, and sometimes it was, and sometimes it was worse. How did I forget to play that note? Why is my fingering all wrong? I was determined to play it better the next time around.

Soon 30 minutes was over and I was still playing Minuet in G. I moved onto Fur Elise by Beethoven, but it turns out I had the abridged version. That's OK because I managed to play the first part OK, partly because it was arpeggios and easier to follow because there was a lot of repetition.

I used to love playing Fur Elise, channeling the romanticism of Beethoven; but now it didn't seem to hold as much meaning to me as it did as a 15-year-old trying to figure out her way in the world.

So I went back to Minuet in G for the last 15 minutes. It's funny how as a kid practicing piano an hour went by at a snail's pace, and here it whipped by and I was playing non stop to get as much practice in as possible. My fingers weren't doing exactly what I wanted them to do, but not bad for not having touched a piano in over two decades!

It was a good distraction to do something different, and also use my brain in another way.