The Piano and the Now.

All instruments sound beautiful. But the most beautiful sound emerges from the instrument of the instruments: the grand piano. With its pitch-black lacquered soundboard, snow white keys and the longest strings, she is majestic, imposing, breathtaking. The ultimate pleasure for the eye and the ear.

This heavenly instrument was invented by the Italian harpsichord maker Bartolomeo Francesco di Cristofori around 1700, the year Johan Sebastian Bach turned 15. Unsatisfied by the lack of touch sensitivity of the harpsichord, he replaced the plucking mechanism by little hammers. This wasn’t just an invention – it was a revolution of sound! He called the instrument ‘gravicembalo col piano e forte’, a harpsichord that can play softly and loudly.

To me, the piano is the most exciting instrument of all. It is a percussion and string instrument at the same time. When the pianist’s finger hits the key, three strings are eventually struck by a hammer. While other instruments require multiple fingers (and sometimes lungs or feet) to produce only one sound, the pianist’s ten fingers can produce 10 tones simultaneously. Or 20 tones, when two pianists play a duet on one piano. Just listen to Kahtia Buniatishvili and Yuya Wang, two contemporary piano icons who play Hungarian Dance No. 5 by Brahms on a Steinway & Sons grand piano together. You will be amazed at the tonal richness.

With her wide tonal and dynamic range and her multiple voices, the piano can replace an entire orchestra. Her tremendous touch sensitivity allows to reproduce the whole gamut of human emotion like no other instrument.

Playing the piano brings me into the present moment. Practicing pianistic technique, learning how to play a composition, improvising a melody and giving a recital to an audience are all moments in which I focus on the present. It is now that my eyes read read the score, that my brain deciphers the notation, that my finger hits a key. I feel emotions triggered by a musical story that resounds now, the only moment that really exists.

The past is gone and the future did not yet occur. Both are abstractions in which we human beings dwell often – but true awareness, and consequently happiness, are hidden in the now. The piano is thus not only an object that produces beautiful sounds, but a channel to transcend my perception of the artist into the only moment one should be.

When I watch a painting, I enjoy its beauty, but when I play the piano, I recreate the composer’s creation. By mixing my emotion with the emotion of the initial creator, I give the piece a new, unheard dimension, which I will never be able to replicate in exactly the same way again.

When I play the piano, she and I become one. Her keys become the extensions of my fingers. She becomes the mediator between me and eternity.