England to Africa

[Carol R. Beigel]

Well, the night before last, I visited Harrad's in London.  That is some
department store!  They sell Blutner, Bechstein, Bosendorfer,
Grotrian-Steinweg, and Schimmel grands, and Petroff and Grotrian-Steinweg
uprights.  Some of the models (cabinets) are exclusive to Harrads - some of
the most beautiful and sweetest pianos I have ever heard!  I think the piano
department is on the 3rd floor.  Ride up on the Egyptian escallator and walk
through the home furnishings (Napoleon eat your heart out!) to get to the
pianos. From the piano department you can go down one level and see all the
new flat screen TVs!

I had just come to London from being a week in Paris.  I heard gypsy kids
playing accordian (begging) on the subway cars; students from the Sorbonne
singing in small groups and playing brass instruments (begging) in the
subway tunnels and cabaret singers accompanying themselves with acoustic
guitars.  The hungry music students also had a string quintet (begging)
outside the Musee D'Orsay and were playing on a day when 3 Metro stations
were shut down and hundreds of soldiers and police were swarming the streets
in preparation for some kind of protest march!  Now I know what traffic
circles were designed for!  STill, it beat Musak!  When you did hear canned
music, it was soft and old.  I once heard an alp horn being played on a
street corner in Lugano, Switzerland.

Here in Washington D.C. when the kids take their music to the street
(begging), it is usually playing tin can drums in Georgetown.  They do that
in Paris, also.  I think the most money I ever saw begging kids make were
three enterprising, young (aged about 10-12) boys on the bank of the East
River in Manhattan playing fiddles and some kind of accordian, knocking out
hornpipe and other dances, and people were filling up their musical
instrument cases with dollar bills!  They were making more money playing
music than selling drugs!

Anyway, I have wandered way off topic - pianos.  But as a piano tuner, I am
very sensitive to the sounds, or lack thereof, around me.  I perk up at the
very hint of something musical, and love hearing live music on the streets.
I so seldom hear this music in the United States and I have never seen a
walkman being used in Europe.  When you do hear someone else's music here in
the States, it is usually a car stereo blasting away, or radio station
blasting in some restaurant  Geesh, we need to bring back music education!

Carol Beigel