THE GRAND PIANO

When I was a small child i took piano lessens. Mostly to please my mother, but also because i enjoyed it.

Later, when I got married, I decided to pick up the piano again, but realized that my talent would not be strong enough to learn a variety of musical pieces. For this reason, and because I thought it would be fun. I decided only to learn one piece of music.

I decided to learn SONATA DE PARTITIQUE by Beethoven, probably one of the most beautiful pieces of piano music, but also one of the most complicated.

At the time, I have a small pianette, on which I practiced every day for several hours, Im very focused and very determined when I get into the mode. I trained and trained, and of course it paid off, I could almost play the whole 30 minutes out of my head, but it took two full years of intensive practice, and my wife didn´t enjoy the tedious repetions a tine bit.

Anyway, when you get into playing piano, you create wishes, you always do, you want the best equipment in order for your efforts to come to live in the best possible way. My wishes was to get a Grand Piano.

But, we were poor, I was still studying, we had two small children, all in all, life was a struggle (when is it not?). And there was definately not room for a grand piano.

However, I couldn´t help it! One evening I told my wife, sort of joking, that I had intentions to buy a grand piano..... and  of course she got slighly furious at me, she couldn´t even take it as a joke.

You should never wish for anyting unless your really wants it, and even so.... be carefull.

Next day, we had visitor from Copenhagen, dinner in the evening. After an excellent meal and a bit of redwine, my guest sitting opposite me, suddently asked if I could be interested in buying a Grand Piano !!!! My wife eyeballed me, i hessitated, but had to ask what the deal was? He told me, that they were about to move, and would not have room for the Piano in the new apartment... I could pick it up for a coulple of hundre USD. Wow, what to do? My unhappy wife was forced to listen to how I accepted to pick up the Grand Piano. Strange, how the world moves around, he could not have a clue to my interests in a Grand Piano.

Later that week the piano was picked up, and brought to my home. An interesting but absolutely maltreated piece of instrument. It had lived the most of its life in a bar in Copenhagen, and the maltreatment was absolutely visible, but what the heck... one could always fix it up ! or....how do your do that? When I was in the states, I had fixed up a couple of more ordinary smaller pianos but never a Grand Piano, seem like a suitable challenge.

I went to Copenhagen, visited the large Copenhagen library, and got a bunch of books with me back, all about the repair of musical instruments. Exiting reading, but...  reading will not do the job, its more like... how do you get varnish for the resonance floor, how do you get new dampers, how do you get new strings, and how do you get the sucker in tune etc. Well I decided to start with the looks. I took the lid of, took the key mecanism out, took the string system out. That was easy.

Then I decided to strip part of it down, in order to see the original finish. It was not  very impressive, so, i decided to give it a new layer of venere. I found an old furnituer shop who also had a stash of very fine veneres, and bought a bunch of Ivory and Rosewood vernere. But, what next? I was used to work on straight surfaces and not rounded surfaces, and at the same time, I didn't have a workshop set-up to handle neither straight or rounded veneering. Hmmm! I decided to cut up the veneer in brick size pieces, a mix of equal amounts of ivory and rosewood. Next problem, how to get the veneer to stay in place once glued, I didn't have any clamps, and even if I did, it wouldn't have worked. I got an idea, I put glue on the surface and the veneer, let it dry for a while, stuck the veneer onto the surface, and helped the glue to dry with my  wifes hot iron. It worked, but was very tedius. After a couple of weeks with intensive work, the outside of the piano had veneer all over.

The lid was flat enough for normal operations and I decided to get some help from a carpenter with a press. Nice, it took only a day or two to get both sides veneered.

The Resonanse floor was cracked, the first thing to do was to widen the cracks a bit more and utilize the natural compression to keep the glued parts together. it was done beautifylly, I used a surrenge to get the glue properly into the joints.

In this tedious fashin I went through the process one step at a time, and the piano became more beautiful by the day, even my wife said so, and maybe deep down she might have enjoyed to follow the process.

But the..... time sort of ran out, she got pegnant, we moved to a new place, I had to take my exam, she got pregnant again, her mother died, and so forth. The piano was dismatled,  first we actually used it as the base of our bed, nowhere else to put it, later on it was stored in a garage, then my wife opened a store with Child Clothing. The Piano was assembled again, (without the mecanism and frame) and was used for some years as a store desk. The store closed, but at the time we didn't have the garage anymore, so it was placed outside.... Uhhhuuh!

One summers evening, we were about to celerbate the whitches flying of towards south,to Bloackgebirge in Gernmany. The whiches always start the travel on a bond fire, and guess what, that particular year, they had the priveleg to start from a flaming Grand Piano. And the only thing left is the memories and this little sad story.