PIANO LESSONS

A privileged Australian classical pianist chronicles her love of music and the delicate student-teacher dynamic that honed her craft.

Growing up in Adelaide in the 1970s, Goldsworthy began studying piano at age six, taking lessons from a jazz musician. Three years later, her grandfather enlisted the assistance of Eleonora Sivan, a distinguished Russian instructor formerly with the Leningrad Conservatorium of Music. Initially perceiving piano pieces as “obstacle courses for fingers, in which the object was getting through to the end, largely unscathed,” the author found Sivan’s demand that she practice two hours per day a daunting task. Goldsworthy’s first dream was to be a singer, but Sivan proved to be a pedagogue whose intensive musical knowledge and sage (often overbearing) instruction, imparted via broken English, successfully nurtured and matured her. Being receptive to the intellectual depth of Bach as well as to Mozart’s simplicity, the author’s burgeoning musical talent developed swiftly from intensive lessons and musical theory to adjudicatory examinations at conservatoriums, while her parents, both prominent doctors, beamed with pride. As an adolescent, the author admits to becoming flummoxed by the life choices presented to her—e.g., would peers consider her a “square” for being smart and playing piano?—and eschewed boys in favor of music (“Boyfriends. Who needed such trifles? I had the piano as my lover”). Awards, recitals and an air of self-congratulatory bliss dominate the third section of the memoir as she, at age 18, glows in the company of awestruck professional musicians. Consistently guided by Sivan’s tutelage, the author ascended further still, though car accidents and a melodic misfire or two threatened to derail her fame. Goldsworthy often takes time out of her own story to mention her father and his accomplishments as a published author and doctor. However, the author’s overabundance of self-love and melodrama often stifles the narrative, as when, after a performance blunder at the Sydney Opera House she “climbed the steps to the top of the opera house, where I assumed a tragic, windswept pose.”

More silver spoon than strife in this indulgent memoir.