I first came across this book in the pages of Pianist Magazine (of which I’m a subscriber). The author, Alan Rusbridger, relates his story of tackling Chopin’s 1st Ballade in a year culminating in performing it to an audience.
I bought the Kindle Edition from Amazon and read it during a Christmas Holiday in Bali. It’s a total of 355 pages long so very approachable to enjoy at the beach.
On the face of it, you might think it would not make a particularly interesting read. However, what the title doesn’t tell you is that first, the ‘amateur’ is (or should I say, was, at the time) the editor of the Guardian. Ssecondly, the year in question is when the famous ‘Wikileaks’ story broke. Thirdly, this amateur has access (by virtue of his profession) to a select group of people that most of us can only dream about meeting.
Any classical music lover will know Chopin’s 1st Ballade. It’s a fabulous piece of music and, in fact, featured in the film ‘The Pianist’ – set in war torn Berlin, telling the story of a Jewish pianist and a German officer.
The ‘amateur against the impossible’ part of the book’s title is easy to understand … this piece of music is exceptionally challenging (Henle level 8 out of a possible difficulty score of 9) both in terms of its technical challenges, but equally in terms of its artistic content. I think any amateur pianist would love to be able to play this but, for most of us, we probably classify it in the realm of the ‘impossible’.
Nonetheless, Alan decides that he will take it on and sets himself the goal of learning it within a year. Alan expressly states that he does not consider himself to have the pianistic skills to play this piece. He is definitely going to put to the test the words of ‘that guy’ – “there is no such thing as a difficult piece – it is either easy or impossible, the process by which it migrates from one category to the other is called practice”.
The book has essentially three main strands:
- Alan’s approach to learning the piece, what he finds challenging, how he goes about getting help to fix the problems and the final end result
- Wikileaks seen from the inside … how Alan lived this story as it developed along with other excerpts from his professional life
- A series of interviews with experts – be it pianists like Daniel Barenboim for artistic matters or neurological specialists to get into the ‘science’ of learning complex music
I don’t want to write a ‘spoiler’ by describing the content in great detail, however, I do want to share my major takeaways from reading this book.
First, it was a great inspiration for my own pianistic ambition. Whilst I don’t have a job anything like as pressurised as Alan’s, I do have a fairly pervasive job which sees me away from home often, frequently calls for late nights, early mornings and weekends spent working. If Alan managed to find time for the piano, then surely so can I.
Secondly, a real game changer for me was the advice of ‘getting up an hour earlier’ … I had never really imagined wanting to practice the piano in the morning. However, since reading this book I now do an hour each day from 8:00 (or earlier) to 9:00. To my own surprise, this really is the most effective time to practice as it’s easier to ‘guarantee’ this slot than trying to find the time (and the energy) to sit down at the piano after a long day at work. When I need to leave for work earlier, I just get up earlier to ensure I get my hour!
Finally, there are many nuggets of fabulous insight from the people he interviewed during the course of the year – ranging from ‘muscle memory’ to ‘artistic vision’. These really help to broaden the mental horizons when thinking about approaching the piano.
A highly recommended read for any aspiring Pianist – but equally would be of interest to anyone with an interest in journalism and current affairs looking for an insight into the life of the editor of a major newspaper.
You can get it on Amazon here:
