Recital

If I sit at the piano, and make myself ready to play it with simple gestures, perhaps a dusting of the page of music and a quick look at the last page, and then I adjust the chair, once. twice. Then complete stillness, my hands folded in my lap, my expression expectant, will any of this draw the music to me? Will it surge through the music- saturated air of the auditorium, and settle for a spell in my hands. Wait, the length of a grace note, and Stockhausen's Piano Piece V descends from whatever empyrean space it occupies and occupies my hands. My fingers are taut with a knowledge they have never known. My mind us empty, it only listens. My fingers play the first section of 60 quavers in just 45 seconds, and immediately begin the 104 quavers of the second section. I am only dimly aware of playing. I want to get up from the piano and kneel at the edge of the stage, and cry out, "Forgive me, friends of music, for deceiving you. I am no pianist, no musician. I am just one of you, but I so longed to make music. Forgive me." But it is useless. I am still at the piano. I am finishing the fifth section of 84 quavers and launch - can this really be true? - into the last section of 95 quavers... Piano Piece V is over. I feel my fingers relax and my hands lose a vital energy. But an audience is applauding, and I hear a woman say to her male companion, "This was better than Kontarsky's! " I bow deeply, and leave the stage. I carry the moment of music in my soul. (Poet's Note: Should I have added a subtitle, "A Fantasy? " Well, the technical data I found and borrowed from THE MUSIC OF STOCKHAUSEN: AN INTRODUCTION by Jonathan Harvey,1975. This poem is make-believe, but even a charade brings us closer to the music we love, and the composer we revere. Any requests for an encore? ... Any?)