~ D. H. Lawrence (1918)
Softly, in the dusk, a woman is singing to me;
Taking me back down the vista of years, till I see
A child sitting under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings
And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings.
In spite of myself, the insidious mastery of song
Betrays me back, till the heart of me weeps to belong
To the old Sunday evenings at home, with winter outside
And hymns in the cosy parlour, the tinkling piano our guide.
So now it is vain for the singer to burst into clamour
With the great black piano appassionato. The glamour
Of childish days is upon me, my manhood is cast
Down in the flood of remembrance, I weep like a child for the past.
We've been looking at new and second hand pianos sporadically over the past few weeks. But we have no idea really what we are looking at technically - height is apparently the thing. But honestly it just needs to match our open plan decor - our first and over-riding, entirely superficial, criteria.
If we were to get a second hand piano, we'd need to get a 'piano man' in to test it and it's all a bit of gamble. I really liked the first big old fashioned timber one above, but we'd need a big old fashioned house to match, and it was a tad shonky. Black would 'go' better with the parquetry floors, but golly I really don't know. Which wall exactly are we going to put it against?
We've also been to the proper piano shop to inspect their offerings. There is a very suitable brand new ebony upright Kawai K-3 - a snip at $6,500! So for the moment it's back to the hired digital piano keyboard on a stand which has been consigned to a room downstairs, not in the hub of the house where it will be frequently played. We really need to get back on the case before the end of term. I have masking tape markers on the walls in two rooms to help size the various models up. It's a dilemma.
