Antal Dorati
I once had a very weird piano teacher named, well, let's just leave his name out of this. We'll call him Mr. Z., because, using his methods, you would surely fall asleep.
He was a tall, elderly man who looked like Count Yorga, the movie vampire. He seemed devoid of all life, dry and listless.
I never heard him play except for a few notes which he sullenly drew from the piano with his hairy, gnome-like hands. He played a tiny bit of Mozart, sighed, and then said, "What's the use?"
His desire to play or even hear music had been beaten out of him by years of relentlesss abuse at the hands of schoolchildren playing Fur Elise, badly, and repeatedly. I felt sorry for him.
Our lessons were held in his tiny, damp rented cottage, where he had a battered upright covered with wine bottles and crumpled, musty sheet music.
His breath was a mixture of wine, decaying ham, and garlic, though he did try to minimize the disgusting odor with an occasional blast of Binaca. Unfortunately, I finally figured out that the Binaca atomizer was empty and he was just going though the motions to appear courteous. It didn't smell courteous.
As a mere ten year old, I was terrified of him, and begged my parents to quit. But he was the only teacher in town that summer, and had a great pedigree. My father said he was a prize student of Litvak or Dumbrowski, or some unknown but revered Polish master.
I can't honestly say I learned a thing from him, except perhaps how bitter and disappointed an old, unknown composer can be.
One time Mr. Z. pulled out an old LP and put the scratchy record on the player.
"That's me playing piano with Antal Dorati. My concerto," he croaked.
A wickedly difficult opening solo piano cadenza led to a thick, noisy mass of clangorous modernism.
Mr. Z turned to me with a gleam in his eye.
"They hated it, " he said proudly.
Visit http://www.americanpianoschool.com Learn to Teach Your Kids Piano with our Free Online Course. John Aschenbrenner is an Emmy Award Winning Composer and a leading children's music educator, book publisher, and the author of numerous fun piano method books in the series PIANO BY NUMBER for kids. You can see the PIANO BY NUMBER series at http://www.pianoiseasy.com
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