On The Mark: Enjoying a musical challenge

On Monday evening last week, the Cromwell-Wright School gym hosted choral and instrumental performances of young people of all ages.

The bleachers on the gym's south side were crammed with parents, grandparents, siblings and community members. Choir teacher MaryRose Varo led half a dozen ensembles, including the full middle school and high school choirs, through heartening songs of Christmas.

Andrew Morrisette, the band director, led various instrumentalists through rousing, energetic pieces that showcased students playing flutes, trombones, trumpets, and timpani. It was marvelous and a good tonic for a very difficult year of Covid and other challenges, including cold weather. The audience members were thrilled.

I accompanied the senior choir on the piano. I'd never done this before for the Christmas program. I have rehearsed with and supported the school's students for their contest performances in the spring, where I mostly worked one-on-one with each soloist.

The music was powerful, and for this amateur and short-fingered

pianist, it was quite challenging. Both the pieces I rehearsed with them - "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" and "Let there be Peace on Earth" - required big sound. That means powerful bass chords supporting runs up and down the middle ranges. Both culminate in gorgeous high chords of triumph.

The students did better than I did at rising to the challenges. Varo is an energetic teacher, highly skilled at helping students with their voice challenges and excellent at teaching them how to sing in multiple keys simultaneously with others. She also chooses pieces with power that demand a great deal from each voice group: bass, tenor, alto and soprano.

My job was to read the notes off pages taped together, stretching across four, even five feet of the keyboard. MaryRose and I experimented with printing out smaller versions, but, even then, reading and playing seven rapid notes simultaneously was hard for me, especially when the most powerful chords appeared on the final page about three feet to the right of my eyes.

I learned a lot, including about my own capabilities.

This experience reminded me of three films about pianists that I've loved over the years. So if you are holed up in this very cold and dark season, consider watching them.

Jane Campion's 1993 "The Piano," set in Australia in the mid-19th century, portrays a mother and daughter who migrate from Scotland, bringing their beloved piano. I think I watched this three times. Campion was the second woman ever to be nominated for an Oscar in solo film direction. (She lost to Steven Spielberg for his "Schindler's List.")

Guiseppe Tornato's "The Legend of 1900" (1998) re-enacts the story of a child born and abandoned on a tourist ship. He is cared for and reared by the all-male crew and learns to play the piano. Because of his skill, he becomes a central character for passengers and crew. Eventually, the ship is going to be scuttled. I won't reveal what happens to him, a man with no passport. A very luscious film.

Roman Polanski's "The Pianist" explores the experience of a Jewish concert pianist hiding out in a Warsaw ghetto apartment during the onset of World War II. While practicing in his room, he is discovered by a German soldier of some stature who decides not to kill or imprison him. Very beautiful and based on a true story.

If you know of any others, please let me know.

And whether you are or are not a Stephen Sondheim fan, I encourage you to watch his masterpiece, "Send in the Clowns," sung by Dame Judi Dench, online with the BBC Symphony Orchestra.

Columnist Ann Markusen is an economist and professor emerita at University of Minnesota. A Pine Knot board member, she lives in Red Clover Township north of Cromwell with her husband, Rod Walli.