Pianos

On Saturday to Bourne Hall for the concluding item of the Epsom Arts Festival – curiously named MGSO4 for magnesium sulphate, aka Epsom salts – widely used for medical and agricultural purposes, not least purgative purposes. See reference 1. A concluding item which took the form of a concert given by a pianist born without a right hand, Nicholas McCarthy. See reference 2.

Also the last leg of his UK tour, although there are more concerts booked for the Autumn. A good place to end, with McCarthy being an Epsom boy.

The first surprise was that Bourne Hall included a full size theatre, with a bigger stage than the somewhat later Epsom Playhouse and a fair size auditorium. The theatre would also have done well as a dance hall. Perhaps when Bourne Hall was built in the early 1970’s, it was thought that one could make a go of such a place with concerts, theatricals and dances – whereas my impression is that the place must be very lightly used – which is a pity. We may have been there once before, years ago now, in the context of an antiques fair or something of that sort.

The theatre also included its own piano, a small grand, not the Yamaha which is McCarthy’s instrument of choice and looking slightly battered. But it sounded well enough.

We learned that, largely as a result of the First World War throwing up a significant number of pianists with just a left hand – more common it seems that pianists with just a right hand – that there is a considerable repertoire for such pianists, some of it adapted from two handed music, some of it written for the left hand. We had a selection of 15 short pieces, spread over about 2 hours, with McCarthy introducing most of them with a few words about where they came from and how they came to him. All fairly new, mostly 20th century, and nothing from those staples of the concert hall, Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert.

Mostly, to my mind, pieces intended to show off what could be done with one hand. Which was impressive as far as that went, but the result, to my mind, was oddly one dimensional, although I think that, on the whole, the pieces written for just the left hand worked better than the adaptations. Perhaps the piano and its repertoire are all about two hands, and dropping down to one takes too much away – unless, perhaps, one was content to play tunes – which McCarthy was not.

I wondered whether he gave much time to playing two handed music with another pianist taking the right hand, possibly a little awkward as the two playing hands would be separated by two bodies. I then wondered about whether one would get on better with an organ with its pedal manual and where a one handed organist could manage two out of the three manuals available. One could, of course, with an electrical Yamaha, get it to play the right hand while one played the left hand – but perhaps no serious musician would want to do that, with the loss of control so implied.

But one had to admire the drive & talent of the man, strong enough to fight through his disability to the extent that he had. One could not help but think, while he talked to us, of all the things made so much harder when you only have one hand to play with (as it were). Sadly, I dare say there would have been a bigger and better niche for his talents in the days when we still had music hall and variety.

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnesium_sulfate.

Reference 2: http://nicholasmccarthy.co.uk/.